Posted by Frederick Bingham on December 05, 2001 at 07:55:06:
I enjoyed this poster. Several years ago I had seen from using the NRL model to study the NHRC. I'm glad those results are making their way into the public domain.
The authors seem to confirm the western boundary current theory of the NHRC. They have also shown nice agreement between their model and the existing observations of the NHRC.
A few comments:
From the abstract, thethird to last and second to last sentences contradict each other. One says there is an impact of topography on the steering of upper ocean currents. The next sentence says that there is no discernible impact. I think what they mean is that the topography steers the lower layer flow, which in turn steers the upper layer flows. They seem to imply this in slides 10 and 11.
Slide 10 states that there is a ridge in the incoming flow. I could not identify what feature the authors were talking about. There is a small ridge east of the big island in the case with topography that is gone in the case without. If this is the feature discussed, it is not clear why it is said to enhance the NHRC.