Influence of Topography on the Propagation of Isolated Eddies

An analytical and numerical study of isolated coherent vortices and topography is presented. The motivation for this work comes from many observations of vortices influenced in trajectory, propagation, and decay by encounters with midocean ridges, seamounts, and bottom slopes. In particular, analytical predictions relevant to vortex propagation and evolution are compared with numerical results for lenses on bottom slopes and mixed barotropic–baroclinic eddies over a variety of topographies. The latter case includes examination of short-term and long-term behavior. Analytical theories are found to work well for the bottom lenses, and short-term behavior is captured well by a simple theory that emphasizes barotropic dynamics for mixed vortices. The exception for the latter case occurs for counterrotating eddies (i.e., eddies with opposing upper- and lower-layer swirl), for which the evolution is dominated by vortex instability. Long-term evolution has no comparable theory, and the various possibilities for vortex behavior are delineated by means of exploratory numerical work. A specific application to the case of North Brazil current rings, which are observed to move at anomalous rates, is presented.