New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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M99033
Received 8 June 1999; accepted 11 April 2000

Detecting a response to weak sea breezes in the New South Wales coastal ocean

MARK T. GIBBS

Department of Marine Science
University of Otago
P. O. Box 56
Dunedin, New Zealand
email: mgibbs@albers.otago.ac.nz

Abstract  Current meter data from the coastal ocean at Sydney, south-eastern Australia, were analysed to seek evidence of a response to the prevailing summer sea breeze. A response to the sea breeze was found in the currents. This is significant since the magnitude of the sea breeze was small by comparison with winds associated with large-scale pressure systems and the East Australian Current. Responses were determined by analysing short periods (3-5 days) of sea breeze activity as opposed to the whole 2-month data set. The correlations between the alongshore nearshore diurnal-period currents and the local wind stress during the sea breeze periods were significantly higher than the correlations during non-sea-breeze periods. Despite the stronger correlations the sea breeze could only account for around one-quarter of the variance in the diurnal-period currents. However, the detection of the response to the sea breeze is significant since the sea breeze has never previously been identified as a process for forcing alongshore nearshore currents on this shelf.

Keywords  sea breeze; coastal processes; coastal oceanography; coastal-trapped waves; Sydney shelf

New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 2000, Vol. 34: 681-687

0028-8330/00/3404-0681 $7.00 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 2000

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (943K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

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