Observations of Shallow-Water Transport and Shear in Western Florida Bay*

Abstract

Abstract Acoustic Doppler profiler (ADP) data are used to describe depth-integrated transport and vertical shear at two study sites along the open western boundary of Florida Bay. During a 404-day study period, transport was into the bay at the northern study site, where the depth-averaged 3.2 m. Transport at the southern study site, where the depth averaged 2.0 m, was out of the bay during a 266-day time period. A comparison of flow in the top and bottom layers of the ADP profile at the northern study site reveals patterns that are very different from each other, and very different from the depth-integrated transport. Nontidal flow in the surface layer is nearly consistently out of the bay and highly correlated with wind forcing. East–west near-bottom flow is inversely correlated with the rise and fall of water level in northwest Florida Bay. Nontidal east–west flow in the bottom layer is negligible, suggesting a near balance between westward directed wind stress and eastward directed barotropic pressure...