Abstract
Wind-driven coastal upwelling is an important process that transports
nutrients from the deep ocean to the surface, fueling biological
productivity. To better understand what affects the upward transport of
nutrients (and many other properties such as temperature, salinity,
oxygen, and carbon), it is necessary to know the depth of source waters
(i.e. “source depth’) or the density of source waters (“source
density’). Here, we focus on the upwelling driven by offshore Ekman
transport and present a scaling relation for the source depth and
density by considering a balance between the wind-driven upwelling and
eddy-driven restratification processes. The scaling suggests that the
source depth varies as $(\tau/N)^{1/2}$, while the
source density goes as $(\tau^{1/2}
N^{3/2})$. We test these relations using numerical simulations of
an idealized coastal upwelling front with varying constant wind forcing
and initial vertically-uniform stratification, and we find good
agreement between the theory and numerical experiments. This highlights
the importance of considering stratification in wind-driven upwelling
dynamics, especially when thinking about how nutrient transport and
primary production of coastal upwelling regions might change with
increased ocean warming and stratification.