Fate of Internal Waves on a Shallow Shelf

Internal waves strongly in fl uence the physical and chemical environment of coastal ecosystems worldwide. We report novel observations from a distributed temperature sensing (DTS) system that tracked the transformation of internal waves from the shelf break to the surf zone over a narrow shelf slope region in the South China Sea. The spatially continuous view of temperature fi elds provides a perspective of physical processes commonly available only in laboratory settings or numerical models, including internal wave re fl ection off a natural slope, shoreward transport of dense fl uid within trapped cores, and observations of internal rundown (near ‐ bed, offshore ‐ directed jets of water preceding a breaking internal wave). Analysis shows that the fate of internal waves on this shelf — whether transmitted into shallow waters or re fl ected back offshore — is mediated by local water column density structure and background currents set by the previous shoaling internal waves, highlighting the importance of wave ‐ wave interactions in nearshore internal wave dynamics.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans

• Publication date

  2020-05-01

• Fields of study

  Geology, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1029/2019jc015377
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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