Abstract
One important problem in physical oceanography is to understand the physics of the mean surface ocean circulation and the variability of this circulation on time scales from several months to several years. Focus in this chapter is on the North Atlantic ocean circulation, and in particular the Gulf Stream region, since for this region relatively many observations are available. The midlatitude surface ocean circulation has also been extensively studied theoretically using a wide range of ocean models. A description of the historical development of knowledge of the North Atlantic circulation has been given by Krauss (1996).
Sailing on the Gulf Stream, but not too rough!
English Suite, J.W. Duarte.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Much work has also been done on the single gyre forcing which is highly relevant in other situations. It is also a case from which much on the fundamental nature of western boundary currents has been learned. The bifurcation structure of the single gyre case in barotropic quasi-geostrophic models has been investigated in Ierley and Sheremet (1995), Sheremet et al. (1997) and Kamenkovich et al. (1995). These studies also provide detailed information on the modes of instability. The time-dependent behavior of the single gyre flows has been studied in (Berloff and Meacham, 1997, 1998a; Meacham and Berloff, 1998, 1997). This work, done with an equivalent barotropic QG-model, was motivated by understanding flow transitions in the Black Sea. For example, in Berloff and Meacham (1998b) it is suggested that the route to chaos in the baroclinic case is the classical three frequency route (Holmes et al., 1996; Ruelle and Takens, 1970).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dijkstra, H.A. (2000). The Wind-Driven Ocean Circulation. In: Nonlinear Physical Oceanography. Atmospheric and Oceanographic Sciences Library, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9450-9_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9450-9_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5541-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-9450-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive