A Predictably Intermittent Rotationally Modified Gravity Current in the Strait of Georgia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Strait of Georgia is a large and deep fjordlike basin on the northeastern Pacific coast whose bottom waters are dramatically renewed by a series of intermittent gravity currents in summer. Here, we analyze a dataset that includes moored observations from 2008 to 2021 and shipborne measurements from a 2018 field program to describe the vertical and cross-channel structure of these gravity currents. We show that the timing of these currents for more than a decade is well predicted by proxy measurements for both tidal mixing strength in the Haro Strait/Boundary Pass region and coastal upwelling on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Renewals occur as an ∼30-m-thick turbid layer extending along the right-hand slope of a broad V-shaped valley that forms the southern end of the strait. Currents are primarily along-isobath at speeds of up to 20 cm s−1 with a small downhill component. A diagnostic analytical model with a depth-dependent eddy viscosity is fitted to the observations and confirms a clockwise rotation of current vectors with height, partly driven by boundary layer dynamics over a scale of a few meters and partly driven by Coriolis forces in the near-bottom linear density gradient. Bottom drag and (small) entrainment parameters are similar to those found in other oceanic situations, and the current is “laminar” with respect to large-scale instabilities (with Froude number ≈1 and Ekman number ≈0.01), although subject to turbulence at small scales (Reynolds number of ∼106). The predictability and reliability of this accessible rotationally modified gravity current suggests that it is an ideal geophysical laboratory for future studies of such features.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".