Horizontal transport on the continental shelf driven by periodic rotary wind stress

What is it about?

The classical Ekman (1905) wind driven theory predicts that in the ocean's surface layer the steady transport that results from a uniform (in time and space) wind forcing is directed perpendicular to the wind direction (to the right of the wind in the northern hemisphere and left of it in the southern hemisphere). The time-dependent transport consists of Inertial Oscillations (oscillations at the local Coriolis frequency) that average out to zero. The theory we develop extents the classical theory to the continental shelf where the bottom of the basin slopes linearly with distance from the shore and to the case when the wind forcing is periodically (in time) rotating (in space) such as sea breeze during daytime changes to land breeze during nighttime. We find that there are cases in which such periodically rotating wind generates a steady current along the coast with the coast to the right of the current.

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Why is it important?

The theory can predict the transport of nutrients, larvae or sewage along coasts under certain wind conditions. This can improve our forecast of environmental hazards or migration of schools of fish in the continental shelf, which the part of the ocean closest to land where humans live.