Journal of Oceanography, Vol. 56, No. 5, pp. 507-515, 2000

Wind Fields over Funka Bay and Their Effect on Water Circulation in the Bay

Jun Inoue1, Masayuki Kawashima1, Kay I. Ohshima1, Yasushi Fujiyoshi1,2 and Ken-ichi Maruyama2

1Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0819, Japan
2Frontier Research System for Global Change, Tokyo 105-6791, Japan

(Received 12 September 1999; in revised form 6 January 2000; accepted 20 March 2000)

 

Horizontal wind fields over Funka Bay during cold air outbreaks were simulated using a 3-D meso-scale atmospheric model. The simulated wind fields over the bay have a positive curl in the north and a negative curl in the south. These wind fields were used to simulate the current in Funka Bay using a barotropic ocean model. The simulated current pattern was composed of two vortices—one with anti-clockwise vorticity in the north and the other with clockwise vorticity in the south—and was in the opposite direction to that simulated by the uniform wind fields. This is because the wind stress curl effect on the vorticity production in Funka Bay opposes and overwhelms the bathymetry torque effect during cold air outbreaks. These results show that the non-uniformity of the wind fields caused by the land topography around a shallow lake or bay cannot be neglected in simulating its currents.