Buoyant gravity currents along a sloping bottom in a rotating fluid

Abstract

The dynamics of buoyant gravity currents in a rotating reference frame is a classical problem relevant to geophysical applications such as river water entering the ocean. However, existing scaling theories are limited to currents propagating along a vertical wall, a situation almost never realized in the ocean. A scaling theory is proposed for the structure (width and depth), nose speed and flow field characteristics of buoyant gravity currents over a sloping bottom as functions of the gravity current transport Q, density anomaly g[prime prime or minute], Coriolis frequency f, and bottom slope [alpha]. The nose propagation speed is cp [similar] cw/ (1 + cw/c[alpha]) and the width of the buoyant gravity current is Wp [similar] cw/ f(1 + cw/c[alpha]), where cw = (2Qg[prime prime or minute] f)1/4 is the nose propagation speed in the vertical wall limit (steep bottom slope) and c[alpha] = [alpha]g/f is the nose propagation speed in the slope-controlled limit (small bottom slope). The key non-dimensional parameter is cw/c[alpha], which indicates whether the bottom slope is steep enough to be considered a vertical wall (cw/c[alpha] [rightward arrow] 0) or approaches the slope-controlled limit (cw/c[alpha] [rightward arrow] [infty infinity]). The scaling theory compares well against a new set of laboratory experiments which span steep to gentle bottom slopes (cw/c[alpha] = 0.11–13.1). Additionally, previous laboratory and numerical model results are reanalysed and shown to support the proposed scaling theory.