Influence of bottom topography on an upwelling current: Generation of long trapped filaments

We investigate the influence of bottom topography on the formation and trapping of long upwelling filaments using a 2-layer shallow water model on the f-plane. A wind forced along-shore current, associated with coastal upwelling along a vertical wall, encounters a promontory of finite width and length, perpendicular to the coast. lower layer, topographic eddies form, which are shown to drive the formation of a filament on the front. Indeed, as the upwelling current and front develop along the coast, the along shore flow crosses the promontory, re-arranging the potential vorticity structure and generating intense vortical structures: water columns with high potential vorticity initially localized upon the promontory are advected into the deep ocean, forming cyclonic eddies, while water columns from the deep ocean with low potential vorticity climb on the topography forming a trapped anticyclonic circulation. These topographic eddies interact with the upper layer upwelling front and form an elongated, trapped and narrow filament. ivity tests are then carried out and it is shown that: inic instability of the front does not play a major role on the formation of long trapped filaments; sing the duration of the wind forcing increases the upwelling current and limits the offshore growth of the filament; ing the promontory characteristics (width, length, height and slopes) has strong impact on the filament evolution, sometimes leading to a multipolarisation of the potential vorticity anomaly structure which results in much more complicated patterns in the upper layer (numerous shorter and less coherent filaments). This shows that only specific promontory shapes can lead to the formation of well defined filaments; bottom friction introduces a slight generation of potential vorticity in the bottom layer over the promontory, but does not significantly alter significantly the formation of the filament along the outcropped front in the present configuration; ing the stratification characteristics, in particular the density jump between the layers, has only a weak influence on the dynamics of topographic eddies and on filament formation; fluence of capes is also modest in our simulations, showing that topography plays the major role in the formation of long and trapped upwelling filaments.