CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Alongshore flow in the direction of propagation of coastal trapped waves can resultin upwelling at the shelfbreak. The intensity of this upwelling can be comparable inmagnitude to wind-driven coastal upwelling, with its associated ecological features.Recent numerical experiments by Matano & Palma indicate that this upwelling resultsfrom convergence of Ekman transport at the shelfbreak. The mechanism for thisphenomenon can be understood in terms of steady solutions to the shallow waterequations in the presence of Coriolis force and bottom drag. Matano & Palmainterpreted their numerical results in terms of the arrested topographic wave, but didnot present direct comparisons. Here we present a family of analytical solutions to theequations of the arrested topographic wave that shows striking quantitative agreementwith earlier numerical results.