PV Anomaly in Shallow-water Island Wake


Changming Dong, James McWilliams, Alexander Shchepetkin
IGPP, UCLA

Leif Thomas

Department of Physical Oceanography
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


It has been shown that the source of the vorticity in the deep-water island wake is primarily generated by the stress in the lateral boundary (Dong, et al, 2007). In the shallow-water island wake, the mechanism for vorticity generation differs from the deep-water wake significantly. The Regional Oceanic Model System (ROMS) is applied to the study. The PV budget is calculated to analyze the generation and evolution of the PV anomaly in the wake. During the study, a general PV budget package for the ROMS model product, which is extended from L.Thomas (2006), is developed, which will be shared with the ROMS community.