STUDY ON THE ANALYTICAL MODEL OF DECAY OF MESOSCALE EDDY ON THE CONTINENTAL SHELF

Observations indicate that the motion of an oceanic mesoscale eddy entering the conti-nental shelf will quickly decay. This shows that the surface area of the eddy continuouslyexpands, and the rotational angular velocity gradually decays with time. Starting from avorticity equation for a vertically stratified, horizontally uniform fluid the above process isdynamically analyzed in this paper. Under the condition to consider the Ekman pump effectof the upper and lower boundary layers and side friction, the analytical models for thesurface area expansion and angular velocity decay of the eddy are deduced.