Coastal-trapped Motions off Southern Tamaulipas and Northern Veracruz, Western Gulf of Mexico

Abstract:

Four months of observations from a near-coastal mooring deployed off southern Tamaulipas-northern Veracruz coast (western Gulf of Mexico) during winter 2012-2013 provides velocity and pressure series in a coastal region where apparently no in-situ measurements have been formally reported. The measurements show numerous events of intense alongshore velocities with magnitudes typically exceeding 80 cm/s, associated with intensified winds associated with the cold fronts invading the western Gulf during fall-winter, via coastal-trapped motions coming from northern locations. These motions induce a coastal jet that modulates the regional along-shelf transports. This notion is corroborated by an analytical coastal-trapped wave (CTW) model which explains most of the variability of the sea level and the alongshore barotropic velocity observed in the mooring, and which can also be used to estimate how much of the observed variance is generated in remote locations along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.