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Abstract The meroplanktonic larvae of many invertebrate and vertebrate species rely on physical transport to move them across the shelf to their adult habitats. One potential mechanism for cross‐shore larval transport is Stokes drift in internal waves. Here, we develop theory to quantify the Stokes velocities of neutrally buoyant and depth‐keeping organisms in linear internal waves in shallow water. We apply the analyses to theoretical and measured internal wave fields, and compare results with a numerical model. Near the surface and bottom boundaries, both neutrally buoyant and depth‐keeping organisms were transported in the direction of the wave's phase propagation. However, neutrally buoyant organisms were transported in the opposite direction of the wave's phase at mid depths, while depth‐keeping organisms had zero net transport there. Weakly depth‐keeping organisms had Stokes drifts between the perfectly depth‐keeping and neutrally buoyant organisms. For reasonable wave amplitudes and phase speeds, organisms would experience horizontal Stokes speeds of several centimeters per second—or a few kilometers per day in a constant wave field. With onshore‐polarized internal waves, Stokes drift in internal waves presents a predictable mechanism for onshore transport of meroplanktonic larvae and other organisms near the surface, and offshore transport at mid depths.
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Fate of Internal Waves on a Shallow Shelf
Abstract Internal waves strongly influence the physical and chemical environment of coastal ecosystems worldwide. We report novel observations from a distributed temperature sensing (DTS) system that tracked the transformation of internal waves from the shelf break to the surf zone over a narrow shelf slope region in the South China Sea. The spatially continuous view of temperature fields provides a perspective of physical processes commonly available only in laboratory settings or numerical models, including internal wave reflection off a natural slope, shoreward transport of dense fluid within trapped cores, and observations of internal rundown (near‐bed, offshore‐directed jets of water preceding a breaking internal wave). Analysis shows that the fate of internal waves on this shelf—whether transmitted into shallow waters or reflected back offshore—is mediated by local water column density structure and background currents set by the previous shoaling internal waves, highlighting the importance of wave‐wave interactions in nearshore internal wave dynamics.
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- PAR ID:
- 10384733
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
- Volume:
- 125
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2169-9275
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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