Chaotic behavior of coastal currents due to random wind forcing

Recent analyses revealed that chaotic behavior is possible in a model of currents induced by wind over topography that slopes offshore and varies approximately periodically alongshore. These analyses were based on the assumption that the forcing by wind is harmonic. The author examines the more realistic case where the wind field, and therefore the wind forcing, is random. Given a wind field with specified spectral density, and any specified parameters of the bottom topography, a generalized Melnikov transform technique is used to estimate upper bounds for probabilities that chaotic excursions will occur during a specified time interval