|
home
people
research
publications
teaching
movies
|
 |
|
Research Projects
Dynamics and energetics of internal waves in Monterey Bay, CA
PhD Student: Dujuan Kang
Monterey Bay is featured by complex bathymetry including the Monterey Submarine Canyon, numerous ridges and small canyons, and a continental slope and break region (see Figure 1). Observations have revealed energetic activity of semidiurnal internal tides in this region. We are employing the SUNTANS model to simulate the barotropic and baroclinic tides in the Monterey Bay area. A detailed and systematical energetics analysis has been carried out to investigate the energy conversion and energy balance related to tidal motions. We are trying to understand the conversion of barotropic energy to baroclinic energy to determine how much internal wave energy radiates into the open ocean vs how much is dissipated locally. This has important ramifications for the global tidal energy balance.
Figure 1: Bathymetry of U.S. West Coast and Monterey Bay area, showing depth in m.
Figure 2: Unstructured grid used by SUNTANS to simulate internal waves on the U.S. West Coast and Monterey Bay. This grid has a horizontal resolution of between 120m and 9.8km, a vertical resolution of between 6.6 and 124 m, and has a total of 6 million cells.
Figure 3: Simulation results of the depth-integrated energy flux in W/m (upper) and barotropic-to-baroclinic energy conversion in W/m (lower).
This project is funded by the ONR Physical Oceanography program.
For more information please visit Dujuan's web page.
Related publications:
D. Kang and O. B. Fringer, 2009, "Numerical investigation of the internal wave generation and evolution in Monterey Bay", in preparation.
D. Kang and O. B. Fringer, 2009, "Energetics of barotropic-to-baroclinic tidal conversion over a slope-shelf topography", in preparation.
D. Kang and O. B. Fringer, 2009, "On the interpretation of available potential energy", in preparation.
D. Kang and O. B. Fringer, 2008, "Simulations of the interaction of mesoscale currents and internal tides", AGU Ocean Science Meeting, Orlando.
D. Kang, O. B. Fringer, M. Gerritsen, Y. Kanarska, J. C. McWilliams, A. F. Shchepetkin, and R. L. Street, 2006, "High-resolution simulations of upwelling and internal waves in monterey bay using a coupled ROMS-SUNTANS multi-scale simulation tool", Eos Trans. AGU, 87(36), Ocean Sci. Meet. Suppl., Abstract OS36G-07.
D. Kang and O. B. Fringer, 2006, "Efficient computation of the nonhydrostatic pressure", Proceedings of the 16th International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference, 3: 414-419.
D. Kang and O. B. Fringer, 2006, "Time accuracy of pressure methods for nonhydrostatic free-surface flows", Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Estuarine and Coastal Modeling, 419-433.
previous |
main
| next
|
