Preliminary results about the stability of an intermediate water current

Abstract

Experiments were run on a 14 m diameter rotating platform to study the stability conditions for a constant volume flow rate current of intermediate water. The flow was introduced in a two-layer system initially at rest in solid body rotation, along the sidewall of the tank, and allowed freely to evolve. A sink collected the intermediate water and thus ensured that the free surface height was constant. Thus the upstream conditions were the rotation rate, the volume flow rate, the density and the initial width of the intermediate current, which was in geostrophic equilibrium when it left the source; i.e. its thickness along the wall at the source was fixed by this condition. The relevant parameters appear to be the Ekman and the Burger numbers. The data collected from the experiments are very consistent, and it appears that there were five typical flow regimes: (1) a stable current along the whole basin; (2) a series of cyclonic vortices attached to the outer edge of the current, with an upstream stable current; (3) a large cyclonic vortex attached to an anticyclonic instability; (4) dipoles shed from the current into the interior fluid; and (5) generation of lenses of intermediate water, similar to meddies. This last result shows that no topographical effect is required to generate such long-lived lenses, which then drift slowly upstream as the dipoles do.