Subtidal surface circulation in lower Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay, Alaska

Nearly 90 Lagrangian surface drifters were deployed and often recovered and re-deployed in lower Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay from 2003 through 2007 and from 2012 through 2017. Velocity vectors calculated from the hourly position data by central finite-differences were low-passed filtered to create maps of the mean, sub-tidal surface circulation. The circulation maps, while generally consistent with the results of Burbank (1977) and Muench et al. (1978), provide new detail showing anti-cyclonic circulation around Kalgin Island, a single cyclonic circulation cell in outer Kachemak Bay, and two circulation cells, one cyclonic and the other anti-cyclonic, in inner Kachemak Bay. (c) 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

By deploying nearly 90 Lagrangian surface drifters in lower Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay, researchers were able to create maps of the surface circulation, revealing new details such as anti-cyclonic circulation around Kalgin Island and multiple circulation cells in Kachemak Bay.