A note on ocean surface drift with application to surface velocities measured with HF Radar

• Published in: Journal of oceanography 2017-08, Vol.73 (4), p.491-502
• Main Authors: Bye, John A. T., Wolff, Jörg-Olaf, Lettmann, Karsten A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Approximation; Boundary layers; Computational fluid dynamics; Deflection; Direction; Drag; Drift; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Ekman layers; Fluids; Freshwater & Marine Ecology; Geostrophic wind; Geostrophic winds; Mathematical models; Ocean currents; Ocean surface; Oceanography; Original Article; Properties; Radar; Sea surface; Similarity; Similarity solutions; Solutions; Surface velocity; Surface water; Temperature (air-sea); Time; Velocity; Wave period; Wind speed
• ISSN: 0916-8370; 1573-868X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10872-017-0417-1

The ocean drift current consists of a (local) pure drift current generated by the interaction of wind and waves at the sea surface, to which the surface geostrophic current is added vectorially. We present (a) a similarity solution for the wave boundary layer (which has been validated through the prediction of the 10-m drag law), from which the component of pure drift current along the direction of the wind (and hence the speed factor) can be evaluated from the 10-m wind speed and the peak wave period, and (b) a similarity solution for the Ekman layers of the two fluids, which shows that under steady-state neutral conditions the pure drift current lies along the direction of the geostrophic wind, and has a magnitude 0.034 that of the geostrophic wind speed. The co-existence of these two similarity solutions indicates that the frictional properties of the coupled air-sea system are easily evaluated functions of the 10-m wind speed and the peak wave period, and also leads to a simple expression for the angle of deflection of the pure drift current to the 10 m wind. The analysis provides a dynamical model for global ocean drift on monthly and annual time scales for which the steady-state neutral model is a good approximation. In particular, the theoretical results appear to be able to successfully predict the mean surface drift measured by HF Radar, which at present is the best technique for studying the near surface velocity profile.