Overtides at the Inner Shelf Offshore of a Cape During Extreme Atmospheric Forcing

Juan Felipe Paniagua-Arroyave, University of Colorado, INSTAAR, Boulder, United States, Arnoldo Valle-Levinson, University of Florida, Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, Gainesville, United States, Sabrina Marie Parra, US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, United States and Peter N Adams, University of Florida, Department of Geological Sciences, Ft Walton Beach, FL, United States
Abstract:
To investigate how shoal‐swale bathymetry influences inner‐shelf hydrodynamics during extreme events, we provide observations at a swale ~13 m deep within Cape Canaveral shoals, ~36 km away from Hurricane Matthew's path during October 2016. When the Hurricane was the closest, current speeds reached 2.7 m/s at a distance ~15 km away from the shoreline. During the storm, currents changed direction counterclockwise from southwestward (speed ~2.7 m/s) to northeastward (speed ~1 m/s). These unidirectional, strong currents concurred with distorted tidal flows, which we suggest that occurred analogously to tidal distortions caused by a river discharge in a channelized tidal flow. Our findings highlight an unreported connection between atmospheric forcing and inner shelf hydrodynamics that can inform morphodynamics and ecological models of inner shelves with complicated bathymetry
Back to: The Inner Shelf: Impacts of Interconnected Processes II