Determining the Stratification of Exchange Flows in Sea Straits

摘要

Our long-term goal is to contribute to the understanding of the dynamics and stratification of exchange flows such as in the Bab al Mandab and to understand the consequences for the circulation in the neighboring basins and/or marginal seas. One of the original objectives of the proposed work is to understand the effect of critical level mixing on the dynamics and stratification of sill flows. In particular, what happens when the mixing is limited to only the middle part of the water column, as appears to be the case in Bab al Mandab. When are such flows hydraulically controlled and to what extent are layer models with interfacial entrainment able to describe the hydraulic behavior. We also sought to formulate a model that captures the communication between the strait/sill system and the circulation and stratification in a connected basin. A separate objective was to convene a meeting of the world's leading investigators of the physics of flow in sea straits in order to review the current state of knowledge and identify important topics of future research.