The effect of wind on the dispersal of a tropical small river plume

doi:10.1007/s11707-016-0628-6

Frontiers of Earth Science

2018, Vol. 12

Issue (1): 170-190 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-016-0628-6

本期目录

The effect of wind on the dispersal of a tropical small river plume

Junpeng ZHAO^1,², Wenping GONG^1,²(

), Jian SHEN³

¹. School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
². Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Resources and Coastal Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
³. Virginia Institute of Marine Science, The College of William and Mary, Gloucester Point, VA 23062, USA

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Abstract：

Wanquan River is a small river located in Hainan, a tropical island in China. As the third largest river in Hainan, the river plume plays an important role in the regional terrigenous mass transport, coastal circulation, and the coral reef’s ecosystem. Studies have shown that wind forcings significantly influence river plume dynamics. In this study, wind effects on the dispersal of the river plume and freshwater transport were examined numerically using a calibrated, unstructured, finite volume numerical model (FVCOM). Both wind direction and magnitude were determined to influence plume dispersal. Northeasterly (downwelling-favorable) winds drove freshwater down-shelf while southeasterly (onshore) winds drove water up-shelf (in the sense of Kelvin wave propagation) , and were confined near the coast. Southwesterly (upwelling-favorable) and northwesterly (offshore) winds transport more freshwater offshore. The transport flux is decomposed into an advection, a vertical shear, and an oscillatory component. The advection flux dominates the freshwater transport in the coastal area and the vertical shear flux is dominant in the offshore area. For the upwelling-favorable wind, the freshwater transport becomes more controlled by the advection transport with an increase in wind stress, due to enhanced vertical mixing. The relative importance of wind forcing and buoyancy force was investigated. It was found that, when the Wedderburn number is larger than one, the plume was dominated by wind forcing, although the importance of wind varies in different parts of the plume. The water column stratification decreased as a whole under the prevailing southwesterly wind, with the exception of the up-shelf and offshore areas.

Key words： small river plume wind effect freshwater transport

收稿日期: 2016-07-17 出版日期: 2018-01-23

Corresponding Author(s): Wenping GONG

引用本文:

. [J]. Frontiers of Earth Science, 2018, 12(1): 170-190.
Junpeng ZHAO, Wenping GONG, Jian SHEN. The effect of wind on the dispersal of a tropical small river plume. Front. Earth Sci., 2018, 12(1): 170-190.

链接本文:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/CN/10.1007/s11707-016-0628-6
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/CN/Y2018/V12/I1/170

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