Long internal waves in lakes: review of a century of research

Details

• Personal Author:
  Mortimer, Clifford Hiley
• Corporate Authors:
  University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. Center for Great Lakes Studies. ; Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; GLERL (Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory)
• Description:
  The century began with Murray's 1888 demonstration of isotherm-tilting forced by wind in stratified lakes in Scotland, where later studies by Wedderburn (1903-1913) identified the internal seiche as the free response to that forcing. Wedderburn's findings were confirmed and extended in Windermere, 1947-51, by deployment of thermistor chains and by Heaps' modelling of the forced and free responses. Transferred to Loch Ness in 1952, the thermistor chains revealed internal seiches of large amplitude with marked nonlinear features, subsequently explored and interpreted by Thorpe and here compared with internal surges in other lakes. Modification of the internal seiche by the earth's rotation was demonstrated in Loch Ness and Lac Léman, in the latter case by means of 1950 surface-level "signatures" of postulated internal Kelvin waves. More recent findings in Léman and in lakes of similar size are reviewed. Temperature records from water intakes around a much larger basin (Lake Michigan) revealed (i) occasional cyclonic progression of nonlinear, shore-trapped interfacial waves traveling at Kelvin wave speeds. Those waves were set in motion after strong, sustained wind had forced extensive downwelling along one side and upwelling along the other side of the basin. Also revealed were (ii) persistent thermocline oscillations of inertial frequency or slightly blueshifted therefrom. To interpret observations (i) and (ii) the writer invoked a well-known wide-channel model which incorporated shore-trapped Kelvin waves, offshore inertial (Sverdrup) waves, and channel-bound Poincaré waves
• Keywords:
  Limnology Winds
• Series:
  Special report (University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee. Center for Great Lakes Studies)   42
• Format:
  pdf
• Document Type:
  Miscellaneous
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA81RAC0013
• Place as Subject:
  Great Lakes (North America)
• License:
  https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
• Rights Information:
  CC0 Public Domain
• Compliance:
  Library
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:95d9638dd78dde11ddc98919d29938023563aa54e5d1f685769b99050271e88e7de7bb4308c92ca0162758242c06f04769790aa7b939e0d749bf1eebcd7e7d09
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/70324/noaa_70324_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 69.08 MB ]