Buoyancy-driven rotating boundary currents

The structure of boundary currents formed from intermediately dense water introduced into a rotating, stably stratified, two-layer environment is investigated in a series of laboratory experiments, performed for Froude numbers ranging from 0.01 to 1. The thickness and streamwise velocity profiles in quasi-steady currents are measured using a pH activated tracer (thymol blue) and found to compare favorably to simplified analytic solutions and numerical models. Currents flowing along sloping boundaries in a stratified background exhibit robust stability at all experimental Froude numbers. Such stability is in sharp contrast to the unequivocal instability of such currents flowing against vertical boundaries, or of currents flowing along slopes in a uniform background. The presence of a variety of wave mechanisms in the ambient medium might account for the slower and wider observed structures and the stability of the currents, by effecting the damping of disturbances through wave radiation.