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Momentum Balance Diagnoses For The West Florida Shelf, Yonggang Liu, Robert H. Weisberg

Yonggang Liu

The momentum balance over the West Florida Shelf is diagnosed using observations of currents, bottom pressures, temperatures, winds, and coastal sea levels, along with hydrographic data from 32 monthly cruises spanning summer 1998 to winter 2001. Over synoptic weather time scales, the depth-averaged across-shelf momentum balance on the inner shelf is essentially geostrophic with smaller contributions from the across-shelf wind stress and other terms. Coherence analyses show that 95% of the acceleration (Coriolis and local) variance may be accounted for by the pressure gradient and friction (surface and bottom) over the synoptic weather band. The balances are more complicated on …