Resonant excitation of coastal Kelvin waves in the two-layer rotating shallow water model

Abstract

Abstract. Resonant excitation of coastal Kelvin waves by free inertia–gravity waves impinging on the coast is studied in the framework of the simplest baroclinic model: two-layer rotating shallow water with an idealized straight coast. It is shown that, with respect to the previous results obtained with the one-layer model, new resonances leading to a possible excitation of Kelvin waves appear. The most interesting ones, described in the paper, are resonances of a baroclinic inertia–gravity wave with either another wave of this kind, or with a coastal current, leading to generation of a barotropic Kelvin wave. A forced Hopf equation results in any case for the evolution of the Kelvin wave amplitude.