%V 39
%A NR McDonald
%A ER Johnson
%K WESTERN BOUNDARY CURRENT, POTENTIAL VORTICITY, COASTAL CURRENTS, UNIMAK PASS, FLOW, DYNAMICS, MOTION, VORTEX, TOPOGRAPHY, BARRIERS
%X A one-parameter family of exact solutions describing the bifurcation of a steady two-dimensional current with uniform vorticity near a gap in a thin barrier is found. The unsteady evolution of source-driven flows toward these steady states is studied using a version of contour dynamics, appropriately modified to take into account the presence of a barrier with a single gap. It is shown that some of the steady solutions are realizable as large-time limits of the source-driven flows, although some are not owing to persistent eddy-shedding events in the vicinity of the gap. For the special case when there is zero net flux through the gap, numerical experiments show that the through-gap flux of vortical fluid increases with the width of the gap and that this flux approaches a steady limit with time.
%N 10
%J Journal of Physical Oceanography
%D 2009
%I AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC
%L discovery96866
%T Gap-Leaping Vortical Currents
%O © Copyright 2009 American Meteorological Society
%P 2665 - 2674