Steep Shelf Stabilization of the Coastal Bransfield Current: Linear Stability Analysis

In situ measurements obtained during the 2010 COUPLING cruise were analyzed in order to fully characterize the velocity structure of the coastal Bransfield Current. An idealized two-layer shallow-water model was used to investigate the various instability processes of the realistic current along the coastal shelf. Particularly studied is how the topographic parameter To (ratio between the shelf slope and the isopycnal slope of the surface current) impacts the growth and the wavelength of the unstable perturbations. For small bottom slopes, when the evolution of the coastal current is controlled by the baroclinic instability, the increase of the topographic parameter To yields a selection of smaller unstable wavelengths. The growth rates increase with small values of To. For larger values of To (To greater than or similar to 10, which is relevant for the coastal Bransfield Current), the baroclinic instability is strongly dampened and the horizontal shear instability becomes the dominant one. In this steep shelf regime, the unstable growth rate and the wavelength selection of the baroclinic coastal current remains almost constant and weakly affected by the amplitude of the bottom velocity or the exact value of the shelf slope. Hence, the linear stability analysis of an idealized Bransfield Current predicts a typical growth time of 7.7 days and an alongshore scale of 47 km all along the South Shetland Island shelf. The fact that these large growth times are identical to the typical transit time of water parcels along the shelf may explain why the current does not exhibit any unstable meanders.