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    Hydraulic control of a highly stratified estuarine front

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    jpo-2692%2E1.pdf (628.0Kb)
    Date
    2005-03
    Author
    MacDonald, Daniel G.  Concept link
    Geyer, W. Rockwell  Concept link
    Metadata
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    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/4229
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-2692.1
    DOI
    10.1175/JPO-2692.1
    Abstract
    Observations at the mouth of the Fraser River (British Columbia, Canada) indicate an abrupt frontal transition between unstratified river outflow and a highly stratified river plume with differences in salinity greater than 25 psu across a few meters in the vertical direction and several hundred meters in the horizontal direction. The front roughly follows a natural break in the bathymetry, crossing the channel at an angle of approximately 45°, and is essentially stationary for a period of approximately 3.5 h centered on the low tide following the larger of two daily ebbs. The location of the front is coincident with observations of significantly supercritical internal Froude numbers at the front, based on velocities in the along-flow direction. This observation contradicts the one-dimensional theory, which indicates that the Froude number should be 1. However, because the front is oriented obliquely to the outflow, a coordinate system can be selected that is normal to the front and for which a critical Froude number of 1 is obtained. This indicates that a Froude angle, similar in application to a Mach angle for transonic flows, can be used to determine critical conditions when the front is oblique to the principal flow direction.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 35 (2005): 374-387, doi:10.1175/JPO-2692.1.
    Collections
    • Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering (AOP&E)
    Suggested Citation
    Journal of Physical Oceanography 35 (2005): 374-387
     
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