• Login
    About WHOAS
    View Item 
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • WHOI Technical Reports
    • View Item
    •   WHOAS Home
    • Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
    • WHOI Technical Reports
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of WHOASCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywordsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesKeywords

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    On the nature of estuarine circulation : part I (chapters 3 and 4)

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    WHOI-52-88.pdf (3.743Mb)
    Date
    1952-10
    Author
    Stommel, Henry M.  Concept link
    Former, Harlow G.  Concept link
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/2032
    DOI
    10.1575/1912/2032
    Keyword
    Estuaries
    Abstract
    The reader will quickly see that the subject matter of Chapter 3 is confined to the hydraulics of sharply stratified media, whereas real estuaries are always more or less diffusely stratified. What is more, no discussion is made of the order of magnitude of the friction terms. In ordinary single layer flow (such as in rivers) engineers already have crude approximations of the friction terms (Chezy and Manning formulas), but we do not have even these approximations for two layer flow. For this reason the differential equations of gradually varied flow of two layers are for the most part left unintegrated and all that is demonstrated is the qualitative aspects of the flow. In the case of entrainment of water from one layer into another we can only perform integrations of the equations when the amount of entrainment is known, whereas in real estuaries we do not have a priori knowledge of this amount. The reader will see, therefore, that the subject matter of Chapter 3 is really very incomplete, leaving undetermined all the constants which depend upon turbulent mixing, upon the frictional stresses on the bottom, and the free surface and the walls, and upon the amount of entrainment. The contents of Chapter 4 are somewhat different. First of all, they contain summaries of several of these papers have proceeded on the basis of hypotheses already published papers on the mixing in estuaries. Most about the nature of the mixing process. The applicability of these hypotheses appears to be restricted to only certain estuaries, and it must be admitted that more work has been done that involves guessing what the mixing processes in an estuary might be, than has been done in trying to find out what the mixing processes in an estuary actually are. As incomplete as the subject matter of Chapter 4 is, it is hoped that it will suggest which of the possible mixing processes in estuaries may be important in any particular one which is the subject of study, and that it will also suggest the type of observations which will be most desirable in studying a particular estuary. For example: in an unstratified estuary it seems that a more or less uniform spacing of stations up and down the estuary is desirable; but in an estuary which appears to be subject to the constraint of overmixing (Section 4.51) the location of stations should be largely confined to control sections.
    Collections
    • WHOI Technical Reports
    Suggested Citation
    Stommel, H., & Former, H. G. (1952). On the nature of estuarine circulation: part I (chapters 3 and 4). Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. https://doi.org/10.1575/1912/2032
     
    All Items in WHOAS are protected by original copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. WHOAS also supports the use of the Creative Commons licenses for original content.
    A service of the MBLWHOI Library | About WHOAS
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | Privacy Policy
    Core Trust Logo