Response characteristics of a buoyancy-driven sea

The authors consider the flow in a semienclosed sea, or basin, subjected to a destablizing surface buoyancy flux and separated from a large adjoining reservoir by a sill. A series of numerical experiments were conducted to quantify the energetics of the flow within the basin, that is, the amount of kinetic and potential energy stored within the basin and the rate at which these quantities are transported to and from the reservoir via the exchange flow over the sill.