Skip to content

The interaction of quasigeostrophic flows with a small island

As a part of the ONR Flow Encountering Abrupt Topography DRI, we deployed 9 Pressure Inverted Echosounders around the island of Palau in the central Pacific. These instruments monitored both the interaction of the large scale North Equatorial Current with the island, as well as the generation of internal tides and solitons in the region.

 
We developed a two layer analytic model for quasigeostrophic flow past an island, showing that for certain flow conditions, Rossby waves may be arrested on either side of the island.
 
More soon...

Funding Agencies

This work was funded by the Office of Naval Research.