On the Interaction between the Gulf Stream and the New England Seamount Chain

Abstract

Abstract In the course of numerical simulations with a primitive equation regional model of the Gulf Stream, bottom topography and the New England Seamount Chain (NESC) in particular show significant influence on the variability and the energetics of the Gulf Stream system. The model is an eddy-resolving, coastal ocean model that includes thermohaline dynamics and a second-order turbulence closure scheme to provide vertical mixing coefficients; it is driven at the surface by observed monthly wind stress and heat fluxes. The surface and the deep variabilities obtained from the numerical simulations are in fair agreement with the observed variabilities inferred, for example, from the Geosat altimetry data and from measurements of eddy kinetic energy (EKE). To study how the NESC affects the Gulf Stream dynamics, a control run without the NESC (however, leaving the other topographic features such as the continental shelf and slope intact) is compared to simulation with full bottom topography. According to the...