Fjord circulation permits a persistent subsurface water mass in a long, deep mid-latitude inlet

Bianucci, Laura; Jackson, Jennifer M.; Allen, Susan E.; Krassovski, Maxim V.; Giesbrecht, Ian J. W.; Callendar, Wendy C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-20-293-2024

Articles | Volume 20, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-20-293-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Oceanography at coastal scales: modelling, coupling, observations,...

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-20-293-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 2

Research article

|

14 Mar 2024

Research article |

| 14 Mar 2024

Fjord circulation permits a persistent subsurface water mass in a long, deep mid-latitude inlet

Laura Bianucci, Jennifer M. Jackson, Susan E. Allen, Maxim V. Krassovski, Ian J. W. Giesbrecht, and Wendy C. Callendar

Data sets

Observed and modelled data from Discovery Islands (British Columbia, Canada) for summer 2019 Laura Bianucci https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10607078

River data associated with ocean model simulations for 2019 in Discovery Islands (British Columbia, Canada) Laura Bianucci https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10795456

Model code and software

Model code and inputs for the article ``Fjord circulation permits a persistent subsurface water mass in a long, deep mid-latitude inlet'' Laura Bianucci https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10798411

FVCOM-GitHub C. Chen https://github.com/FVCOM-GitHub/FVCOM

PTrack: off-line lagrangian particle tracking model T. Losier https://github.com/VA1TRL/PTrack

Short summary

While the deeper waters in the coastal ocean show signs of climate-change-induced warming and deoxygenation, some fjords can keep cool and oxygenated waters in the subsurface. We use a model to investigate how these subsurface waters created during winter can linger all summer in Bute Inlet, Canada. We found two main mechanisms that make this fjord retentive: the typical slow subsurface circulation in such a deep, long fjord and the further speed reduction when the cold waters are present.