The influence of bottom topography on internal seiches in stratified media

by
Matthias Münnich


Abstract

Standing internal waves, so-called seiches, are ubiquitous in reservoirs and lakes. While the stratification in such basin is often continuous, the modeling of seiches has been confined mostly to two-layer models. Such models are unable to give reliable insights about the vertical structure of the seiches, which might be crucial for the understanding of vertical mixing in natural water basin. To obtain this knd of informations a 2-dim. computer model has been developed, which takes both the continuous stratification and the bottom topography into account. The results of this model are presented. The computed seiche modes reveal that
  1. several large scale modes can exist with similar eigenfrequencies,
  2. the modes have a tendency to develop narrow jets and
  3. only the lowest modes are strongly influenced by the bottom topography.
Published in Dyn. Atmos. Oceans, 24: 257-266, 1996.

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