WIND- AND DENSITY-DRIVEN WATER CIRCULATION IN THE SOUTHERN BALTIC SEA: A NUMERICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

The study focuses on the hydrodynamic processes in the southern Baltic Sea, with special interest in the Stolpe Channel – the only deep water connection between Bornholm Basin to the west and Gdansk and Gotland Basins to the east. The Channel is an area of strong interactions of wind- and density-driven currents that may lead to a complex flow structure. A three-dimensional numerical model was applied to an analysis of processes mentioned above. Three model versions of different spatial resolution (5, 3 and 1Nm) were used to investigate an influence of this parameter on the model results. The simulations were performed for four main wind directions, for a variable in time wind speed. It was shown that water circulation in the southern Baltic is to a high degree dependent on local anemobaric conditions. The results confirm the hypothesis of Krauss and Brugge that the flow in the Channel is opposite to the wind direction. Numerical grid step can have a decisive influence on the modeled circulation patterns, especially when barotropic and baroclinic flow components counteract. In such situations – when the flow is bidirectional and mesoscale eddies are generated – high resolution of the model is particularly important.