A Laboratory Study of Formation of 'The Warm Core' in the East Sea of Korea

Abstract

In a laboratory model the response of the boundary layer flow over topography is studied in a rotating sliced cylinder by employing the source-sink analogy with Ekman layer dynamics. The boundary layer flow is produced by two different fluid. In the first experiment homogeneous fluid is used both for the source and the working fluid of the container. In the second experiment a denser fluid is used for the source with the same working fluid. For the homogeneous western boundary layer flow both the northward and the southward flow were affected by the topography(ridge) to produce a cyclonic motion near the ridge. When woughward moving heavy boundary flow of slower speed and the northward moving faster flow were present at the same time, the splitting of southward flow and the separating of the northward flow were observed with a cyclonic motion at the ridge. The most important factor that influence production of the cyclonic motion has been turned out to be the presence of the topography in the western boundary layer. In particular the role of the southward moving heavy flow over the interior flow pattern was found to be very significant.

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