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Abstract Estuaries in the northern California current system (NCCS) experience seasonally reversing wind stress, which is expected to impact the origin and properties of inflowing ocean water. Wind stress has been shown to affect the source of estuarine inflow by driving alongshelf currents. However, the effects of vertical transport by wind‐driven Ekman dynamics and other shelf and slope currents on inflow are yet to be explored. Variations in inflow to two NCCS estuarine systems, the Salish Sea and the Columbia River estuary, were studied using particle tracking in a hydrodynamic model. Particles were released in a grid extending two degrees of latitude north and south of each estuary every two weeks of 2017 and tracked for sixty days. Inflow was identified as particles that crossed the estuary mouths. Wind stress was compared with initial horizontal and vertical positions and physical properties of shelf inflow particles. Inflow to the Salish Sea came from Vancouver Island and Washington slope water upwelled through canyons during upwelling‐favorable wind stress, and from Washington slope water or Columbia River plume water during downwelling‐favorable wind stress. Inflow to the Columbia River estuary came from Washington shelf bottom water during upwelling‐favorable wind stress and Oregon shelf surface water during downwelling‐favorable wind stress. For both estuaries, upwelling‐favorable wind stress direction was significantly correlated with a denser and deeper shelf inflow source north of the estuary mouth. These results may help predict the source and properties of inflow to estuaries in other regions with known wind or shelf current patterns. 

Dry weather pollution sources cause coastal water quality problems that are not accounted for in existing beach advisory metrics. A 1D wave-driven advection and loss model was developed for a 30 km nearshore domain spanning the United States/Mexico border region. Bathymetric nonuniformities, such as the inlet and shoal near the Tijuana River estuary mouth, were neglected. Nearshore alongshore velocities were estimated by using wave properties at an offshore location. The 1D model was evaluated using the hourly output of a 3D regional hydrodynamic model. The 1D model had high skill in reproducing the spatially averaged alongshore velocities from the 3D model. The 1D and 3D models agreed on tracer exceedance or nonexceedance above a human illness probability threshold for 87% of model time steps. 1D model tracer was well-correlated with targeted water samples tested for DNA-based human fecal indicators. This demonstrates that a simple, computationally fast, 1D nearshore wave-driven advection model can reproduce nearshore tracer evolution from a 3D model over a range of wave conditions ignoring bathymetric nonuniformities at this site and may be applicable to other locations. 

Abstract The inflow to an estuary originates on the shelf. It flushes the estuary and can bring in nutrients, heat, salt, and hypoxic water, having consequences for estuarine ecosystems and fjordic glacial melt. However, the source of estuarine inflow has only been explored in simple models that do not resolve interactions between inflow and outflow outside of the estuarine channel. This study addressed the estuary inflow problem using variations on a three-dimensional primitive equation model of an idealized estuarine channel next to a sloping, unstratified shelf with mixing provided by a single frequency, 12-hour tide. Inflow was identified using particle tracking, momentum budgets, and Total Exchange Flow. Inflow sources were found in shelf water downstream of the estuary, river plume water, and shelf water upstream of the estuary. Downstream is defined here with respect to the direction of coastal trapped wave propagation, which is to the right for an observer looking seaward from the estuary mouth in the northern hemisphere. Downstream of the estuary and offshore of the plume, the dynamics were quasi-geostrophic, consistent with previous simple models. The effect of this inflowing current on the geometry of the river plume front was found to be small. Novel sources of inflow were identified which originated from within the plume and upstream of the estuary.