Rectification of the wind-driven ocean circulation on the beta plane

Abstract

A nonlinear Stommel model of the ocean circulation on the beta plane, driven by a time periodic wind stress, is investigated in order to study symmetry properties of the observed time-mean ocean gyres. Due to the presence of vorticity advection terms the model will have a steady or rectified response to fluctuating wind fields. In this paper a small inverse Ekman number, “the small beta regime”, is considered. It is demonstrated that for this case all qualitative features of the residual circulation, obtained numerically by Veronis (1970). are reproduced in an analytical way. They include the dipole character of the gyre, its maximum symmetry breaking around the north-south axis for intermediate Reynolds numbers, measuring the ratio of vorticity forcing and dissipation, and the maximum residual response for intermediate forcing frequencies.

Key Words:

• Beta plane
• wind stress
• ocean circulation