LOOP CURRENT DYNAMICS IN LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS

Two aspects of the Loop Current (LC) dynamics in the Gulf of Mexico were studied in a series of laboratory tests: 1) the variation of its penetration distance into the Gulf, and 2) the process of ring detachment by this current. The experiments were conducted in a square tank with a scaled coastal geometry of the Gulf. A flow field was generated by pumping waters of different densities into the Caribbean Sea through the two major channels of the Greater and Lesser Antilles. The flow characteristics depend upon the horizontal and vertical scales of the basin, influx, density differences, and rate of rotation. They can be classified according to the dimensionless parameters of Reynolds (Re) and Burger (Bu). The results of the flat bottom barotropic/baroclinic experiments with constant flux demonstrate that the major phenomena of the LC dynamics can be reproduced in a laboratory. We find that the penetration distance of the LC is governed by the Reynolds number, which is the ratio of the inertial force to the frictional force, while eddy shedding occurs for a Burger number less than unity (Bu