2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting SEACOOS Poster - Ocean Current Structures and Sea Surface Height Estimates Across the Central West Florida Shelf

For the program on "Coastal Upwelling: Coevolution of Physical, Chemical, and Biological Theory and Practices II Posters," OS36J-01. The across-shelf structures of ocean current and the associated sea surface height (SSH) variability are examined on the West Florida Shelf (WFS) for the time interval September 1998 to December 2001. Five sets of characteristic patterns are extracted from two-day, low-pass filtered data using the Self-Organizing Map: extreme upwelling and downwelling structures with strong currents, asymmetric upwelling and downwelling structures with moderate currents, and a set of transitional structures with weak currents. The temporal variations of these structures are coherent with local winds on synoptic weather time scales. On seasonal time scales they are related to both the local winds and the water density distributions. The circulation is predominantly upwelling during fall to spring months (October to April) and downwelling during summer months (June to September). Coastal sea level fluctuations are related to both the offshore SSH and the dynamical response of the inner shelf wind-driven circulation to external forcing. On long time scales, the offshore SSH variations dominate, whereas on the synoptic weather time scales, the inner shelf wind-driven circulation responses are controlling. We estimate the across-shelf distribution of SSH from the velocity, hydrography, wind, and coastal sea level data, and we compare the results with altimetry data, thereby providing a means for calibrating satellite altimetry on the shelf. *Y Liu, R H Weisberg