Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler observations in the southern Caspian Sea : shelf currents and flow field o ff Freidoonkenar Bay

Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler observations in the southern Caspian Sea: shelf currents and flow field off Freidoonkenar Bay, Iran P. Ghaffari and V. Chegini Dept. of Physical Oceanography, Iranian National Center for Oceanography, No. 3, Western Fatemi, 1411813389 Tehran, Iran Dept. of Marine Engineering, Iranian National Center for Oceanography, No. 3, Western Fatemi, 1411813389 Tehran, Iran Received: 3 October 2009 – Accepted: 21 November 2009 – Published: 8 December 2009 Correspondence to: P. Ghaffari (ghaffari@inco.ac.ir) Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.


Introduction
The Caspian Sea (CS) is the largest inland water body of the world with a surface area of 379 000 km 2 , a drainage area of approximately 3.5 million km 2 , and a volume of 78 000 km 3 (Froehlich et al., 1999).This lake is located at Northern Hemisphere between latitudes of 36 • and 45 • .An area with various bathymetric levels is rather originally distributed over the CS (Ismailova, 2004).separated by a sill with a maximum depth of about 170 m and the northern basin with maximum depth about 20 m is a very thin extension of the central basin (Peeters et al., 2000).The surface area of these three basins are more or less equal (Vali-Khodjeini, 1994).
The southern basin of the CS has a subtropical climate characterized by warm summers and mild winters.Madat-Zade (1959) classified 13 atmospheric circulation patterns which determine the wind field over the CS, which latterly was stored into two groups.The first one includes those patterns that are characterized by strong northerly winds.Almost half of the winds belong to the northwestern quarter.The second group comprises atmospheric circulation patterns with strong southerly wind (Rodionov, 1994).The role of the atmospheric circulation is fundamental in formation of the Caspian hydro-meteorological regime due to the lack of the outlet.The process of hydrological fields transformation, redistribution of biogenic and pollutant substances depends significantly on horizontal circulation of the CS, which for different reasons have not been studied enough (Ismailova, 2004).Main circulations in the CS consist of cyclonic eddies (Terziev et al., 1992) and meso-scale eddy features which have seasonal evolution (Trukhchev et al., 1995).The CS currents are considered to be mainly wind-generated.Other types of currents, e.g.baroclinic currents and seiches also play important roles in local circulation patterns (Sur et al., 2000).Over the central basin of the CS, the main features of circulation are a cyclonic gyre, a jet-like current in the cyclonic sense along the western and eastern boundaries, and an anticyclonic gyre in south of the Apsheron Peninsula (Korotenko et al., 2000).Although various field measurements were carried out in the northern and the central basins of the CS (Bondarenko, 1993;Klevtsova, 1967;Kosarev, 1990;Tuzhilkin et al., 1997), but only a few number of measurements in order to investigate the coastal flow field have been accomplished in the southern basin (Zaker et al., 2007).
A series of filed measurements were carried out by Iranian National center for Oceanography in FB near the Mazandaran Province, Iran, using Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP).The scope of this paper is to describe and interpret the results Introduction

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Full obtained from the analysis of the ADCP observations and wind data sets gathered from August to December 2003 in the southern part of the CS.The purpose of the study was to shed light on the flow pattern of the selected area and to explain some of the features encountered along the Iranian shelf.More specifically, these features are: the surface coastal currents which are strongly influenced by the local winds; sea breeze system present throughout the year and acts similar to tide; and the flow regime exists along the southern coast exposed by remote forces (synoptic wind).In second part of the present paper a brief description of the study area and the field measurement design is given; in Sect.3, a description of the method used in the data analysis for the separation of the deferent components of currents can be found; in Sect.4, the results obtained are shown and discussed and finally the conclusion has been presented in Sect. 5.
2 Field measurement

Study area
The study area is located at the south-east part of the CS, which covers coastal waters of the Mazandaran Province (Fig. 1).Based on the topographic features, the continental shelf has an approximately 10 km width along the almost whole Iranian waters of the CS.From the coastline depth increases gently to about 45 m (shelf break), thereafter follows by drastic increase to 400 m in 18 km (Zaker et al., 2007).The continental shelf on the southern coastal areas is fairly slim and topographic contours are parallel to the coastline and follow the same feature from west to the east side covering roughly 400 km.

Observations
The coastal current and weather parameters observations were carried out using the combination of bottom-mounted 300 KHz Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP) Wind parameters were regularly recorded every 3 h by local meteorological station of Iran Meteorological Organization (IRIMO), which is located in Babolsar Bay.Considering the IRIMO station location, recorded data could not completely be attributed to the study area, in addition based on the old fashion and aged instruments (e.g.generally not self contain), there were some doubts about recordings accuracy.In order to obtain suitable data, an Automatic Weather Station (AWS), was installed at the head of the FB Jetty fairly adjacent to the study area and free from any obstruction which may affect the data quality.The meteorological parameters recording frequency was 6 cph.and observations were sustained for four months from the early August to the end of November 2003.The regional depth contours and shore line define an alongshore direction rotated 12 • anti-clockwise from east.Therefore alongshore (positive directed 78 • E) and cross-shore (positive oriented 348 • N) directions modification was applied to both wind and current data (Fig. 1b).
3 Data analysis

Data treatment
Prior to conducting the analysis, both the original wind and current data were supplied as two components (u -positive eastward, v -positive northward).According to the coast orientation in the study area (Fig. 1b), coordinate system was rotated 12 clockwise to define an alongshore and cross-shore components for currents and wind.A quality control procedure was performed to eliminate obvious errors.Then the data were checked for date, changes in references and clears spikes, i.e., anomalous values that may appear occasionally due to errors in target speed or on endpoints of data during instrument handling procedure.
The analysis revealed that the underlying distribution is not normal.The method of First Differences (FD) is useful to demonstrate if a data set is acting nearly linear or not.The FD method for combining station data (Peterson et al., 1998) was created to facilitate the use of short data segments in the analysis of surface data (Free et al., 2004).Therefore the current data spicks were individuated utilizing the FD method: the FD was determined from the primary set of current data to achieve a second-order stationary (mean and variance are steadier than the original data set).Up to specific degree, the differenced data satisfy condition of a normal distribution.The FD series is the time series, so that where x t is the value of the variable at time t.The D t values for each time step were averaged over the 12 bins to form bin-averaged a first difference series r t .The mean time series was then constructed by cumulatively summing the bin-averaged first difference values from the first sample to the last, setting the first record to zero: Then, a threshold was defined at ±3.0× std, (std stand for standard deviation of first differences).Within this limit, 99% of R n time series is included.Hence all those data that fell outside of the 99% interval and those correspondence data in original time series were investigated as probable error spicks.The necessary requirement was: if one value was suspected and fell at the 0.5% extreme end of the distribution and then the intimate value in time fell at the other 0.5% extreme end of the distribution, then the suspected value indicated as a spike that was eliminated from the original Introduction

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Full Screen / Esc Printer-friendly Version Interactive Discussion data set (Kovaevi et al., 2004).In such way, the anomalous values were removed.The cleaned time series, called de-spiked data, were the core of all further analysis.Then clean data were filtered to obtain the hourly data.The smooth hourly data facilitated by applying 54 points symmetrical Doodson filter, to the original de-spiked (6 cph sampling intervals) time series.The filtered value X f (t) at time t is computed by the following formula: Considering the symmetrical nature of the filter, no phase shifts are introduced to the dataset (Pugh, 1987).

Basic method for time-series analysis
A power spectrum, obtained by a complex Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), is a tool for distributing the total variance over a range of frequencies.The highest frequency i.e., the Nyquist frequency, which can be solved with a sampling interval of one hour, is 0.5 cph.The essential requirement for applying a classical FFT method is the continuity of the data record.Therefore, the time series of the current and wind components were inspected for gaps both initial (6 cph sampled data) and hourly filtered.When the gap size is small and not longer than 6 h, it can be linearly interpolated (Kovačević et al., 2004).Zero-padding method was used in the case of large gaps which were the case for ADCP time series during the battery change and data retrieving in the almost mid way of the recording period.Although adding zeros helps the process of filling the shape of the spectrum, but in no case it improves the fundamental frequency resolution (Emery and Thomson, 1998).Three bin layers were chosen with the purpose of appraise spectral energy variation and time series analysis between different levels of water column.
Decomposition of a complex horizontal velocity vector, w(t) = u(t)+i v(t) into counterrotating circularly polarized components can aid in the separation of the energy into Introduction

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Full positive and negative parts.In rotary spectral analysis, the different frequency components of the vector w(t) are represented in terms of counterclockwise (positive angular frequency w ≥ 0 and clockwise (negative angular frequency w ≤ 0) rotating vectors.The method of the rotary analysis of current is particularly effective for identifying the inertial motions.Inertial oscillations appear as a peak in the residual spectrum in the clockwise side in the Northern Hemisphere and the anticlockwise component in the Southern Hemisphere after removing the tides from the rotary components (Pugh, 1987).
The data still contain some high-frequency fluctuations, such as diurnal and semidiurnal components of sea breeze.In order to relate the current to some particular wind conditions, the high-frequency motions ware eliminated by low-pass filtering.A digital symmetric low-pass filter [PL33], (Beardsley et al., 1985;Flagg et al., 1976), operated on hourly time series, as those lengths are at least a threefold filter length.Low-frequency currents were then used for mapping the hourly flow field in conjunction with some extreme wind conditions in order to illustrate the wind-forced low-frequency responses.The CS does not contain natural periods of resonance which align closely with either the diurnal or semi-diurnal tide rising forces.Hence it does not respond vigorously and consequently, no significant tide is generated.The tidal range does not exceed more than few centimeters in the CS and such small tides may often be invisible or masked by other phenomena such as wind.By applying harmonic analysis to the current data (not shown here), based on Forman (1978), and utilizing a number of MATLAB programs, it was found that tide has not a substantial contribution in the flow field.Therefore it is trivial to remove tidal component from data prior to further analysis which is usual in signal processing.Introduction

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Full

Wind variability
The most typical hydro-meteorological feature of the CS is the winds.Meteorological condition over the CS and adjacent regions are determined by air circulation over the Eurasian continent, as well as by the coastal area relief.Meanwhile, the meteorological parameters change greatly over the territory of the CS (Filimonova and Trubetskova, 2005).In order to illustrate the local wind condition over the study area, hourly filtered wind data in some particular periods were selected.For this purpose, two time segments were chosen: first 720 h of hourly wind data (covers August 2003) owing to demonstrate sea breeze system, and last 740 h (from 2000 h to the end) of hourly wind which represents main storm events (covers partly October and mostly November of 2003).Strong NW winds occurred sporadically in span of the recording period.It could be considered as relatively frequent events during cold season, while pronounces less in hot season.When local weather conditions are influenced by the passages of synoptic atmospheric perturbations, cyclones and anti-cyclones (Mofidi et al., 2008) winds prevail most of the events.Relatively low winds persist in the middle of the second segment, however the maximum hourly speed of about 20 m s −1 is observed in this segment.

Sea breezes and events
Sea breeze is mainly responsible for transferring of energy to coastal systems.When sea breeze is present, wind speeds are usually low (∼4 m s −1 ) and directed onshore (southward).Sea breeze begins from early morning at 05:00 a.m.Then wind direction changes seaward around 04:00 p.m. and decreases to approximately 2 m s −1 .Although the wind shear stress is usually very small, its effect can be significant when integrated over a large body of water (Dean and Dalrymple, 1991).Wind stress can be estimated using any of several formulas in the literature.Commonly used equation by (Wu, 1969), is taken to account for wind stress computation.Figure 2b and d, demonstrates wind stress of hourly filtered wind data in two segments.In the first section of wind data (first 720 h), wind stress is low and does not vary too much in direction, mainly directed to eastward.Last part of the wind record shows relatively strong wind stress, which was directed to the eastward as well.Mean and variance values based on hourly and daily filtered wind data (Table 1); reveal that approximately 60% of wind energy is attributed to the 1 cpd and higher frequencies in alongshore direction.However in cross-shore direction the majority of wind energy (67-83%) accumulates on 1 cpd and higher frequencies.Daily filtered of the first segment of wind data and a number of storm events during late summer and early winter are shown in Fig. 3. Mean sea breeze vectors over one month illustrate a permanent residual wind in south eastward.
Resemblance feature is valid for the rest of wind records that shows a lasting south eastward motive force over the study area.As it is evident from wind time series, the sea breeze system is present throughout the year and acts as the regular forcing in a similar manner to that of tides in other regions.Therefore considering the absence of tidal components, it seems that sea breeze acts like as diurnal and semidiurnal tide in the southern coastal waters of the CS.Introduction

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Interactive Discussion There are some exceptions which could be remarked as storm events.The storm events occur sporadically and sustain approximately 1 to 2 days.The storm had peak wind speeds of around 15 m s −1 in summer and 20 m s −1 in winter which mainly are north-westerly.Owing to be closed basin and lack of outlet, the role of atmospheric circulation in formation of the CS's hydrodynamics regime is particularly important.
The southern CS storms were related to the combination of sea breeze and first local synoptic weather patterns.On average the probability of such winds in the course of a year is %41 (Rodionov, 1994).The number of days with storms (wind speed greater than 15 m s −1 ) is not frequent and do not exceed 20-30 days per year (Kosarev, 2005).

Response of the current to the wind
Tidal motions bear a negligible contribution in the total current variability in the CS, therefore flow field should be considered in absence of tidal force.Strong temporal variation and the current field evolution corresponding to variable winds in span of August and September 2003 are represented in Fig. 4, in terms of hourly filtered wind and the current data.As it is illustrated in this figure, exempt for the possible influence of the sea breeze on the surface circulation during recording period when diurnal variations are dominant, wind action is prominent only in squally weather conditions.These events occur during the strong winds i.e.; four wind episodes of the Fig. 3, and usually sustain in term of days after wind episodes.The maximum hourly current speed of 50 and 60 cm s −1 are recorded respectively on 13-14 august and 14-15 September 2003 subsequent to a wind event.Considering the three different layers reveal that, current velocity variations follow almost the same trend throughout the whole water column therefore, flow field shows a barotropic behavior during the recording period.According to Fig. 4 among the whole water column the alongshore currents are stronger and almost fourfold of cross-shore currents.
Wind and current profile in alongshore direction show the correlation (r ∼ 0.2) and one hour time lag at the surface, which maintains the same value to the sea bed (Fig. 5a).This indicated an almost same response of the entire water column to the Introduction

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Full wind stress in the recording period.In cross-shore direction (Fig. 5b), wind and current profiles demonstrate much correlation which after starting from 0.5 at the surface, it decreases slightly to 0.3 at the bottom.Time lag for the wind forcing decreases from 7 to 1 h at the fist 8 m surface layer and from 8 m to bottom current responds to the wind force with 13 h lag.The maximum correlation between wind and current speeds range from 0.2 to 0.5 during whole measurements suggest that the local wind forcing drive about 25% of the variation in the current velocities, particularly in cross-shore direction.In alongshore direction the share of local wind force in the variation of the current velocities is negligible.Bondarenko (1994), using the results of field survey in the middle and the northern CS showed that there is no direct relation between wind speed/direction and currents even though in the extreme winds.The measurements along the Iranian coasts have highlighted that although correlation between wind and current are low and strong currents sporadically are evident at calm wind condition, but wind events cause to strengthening the currents.Additionally taking to account the law frequencies (low pass filtered data), the correlation coefficient between wind and current in alongshore direction increases significantly to 0.5 in almost whole water column.
The response of the current to the wind forcing in alongshore direction demonstrates the same value as hourly data and retains 1 h from surface to the bottom (Fig. 5c).In terms of the cross-shore direction, a decrease in correlation is distinguishable respect to hourly data.The currents respond to the wind force with 10 h lag at surface which follows by 1 h lag among the rest of water column (Fig. 5d).This illustrates that the currents and wind force are more correlated in low frequencies in alongshore direction.Moreover it reveals that although in cross-shore, the flow filed is more proportional to diurnal and semidiurnal oscillation of sea breeze, in alongshore direction synoptical weather band is more efficient on flow regime.

Wave passing
Classical understanding of the general circulation of the CS is varied time and again in confrontation with flow field temporal variability on the order of several days.In other Introduction

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Full words, the characteristics of the flow field with time variability on the order of several days is often very different from the general circulation.In fact, it is possible to find westward current along the Iranian coast in the study area opposite to the general circulation pattern.There are clear indications of the presence of the strong west and eastward coastal jets which were not evidently generated by the local winds, since there was calm wind condition in the most period of the record.Additionally by considering simply the modified Ekman relation for current speed as a function of wind speed, V 0 = K U 10 = ( 0.0068 √ sin|ϕ| )U 10 , |ϕ| ≥ 10, where U 10 is the wind speed at 10 m above the sea and V 0 is surface current speed as a function of wind speed (Ralph and Niiler, 2000), it may be concluded that a wind with average 5 m s −1 can generate a current with 12 cm s −1 velocity over the CS.However along the southeastern coast of the CS currents with 60 cm s −1 magnitude are evident at the present of wind with average 5 m s −1 speed or during dead calm wind conditions (Fig. 4).The occurring of pulses i.e. on 6-18 September are two consecutive events for which we have rather good evidence of the wave passage, based on ADCP data.Currents data showed passing waves with approximately 6 days period, which sometimes were reinforced by wind events.In both cases, eastward jet was present at the recording area on 4-8 and 12-14 September (Fig. 4), i.e. at the time of the wave interval and its passing.Then the flow turned toward west ward as could be expected.Thereafter the currents became much less on 18 September, when the jet became weaker and presumably the waves have passed by.In the ADCP data set, evidence of the transient intensification of the eastward currents may be associated with the passage of the shore-controlled waves.Shore-controlled waves were recorded in the north and middle parts of the CS with 15-20 cm s −1 current speed and almost 6 days wave period as well (Bondarenko, 1994).
These waves set up the sea level along the coast of the CS and strong currents in the calm or weak wind conditions could be attributed to long waves which originated from other parts of the CS.The passage of waves is especially evident in daily averaged current which illustrated the turning of the current in alongshore direction.Shelf waves set up sea level; therefore the practical way to detecting these waves is processing Introduction

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Full both currents and sea level data simultaneously.Since neither ADCP nor local tide gauges did not record sea level during the measurement period, there are not any adequate sea level data confirming the wave passage.In brief, it may be concluded that the signals travel with velocities that are much greater than the flow field speed, so it could be well approximated by shelf waves.

Long term scales
In order to study the shelf circulation in longer time scales, the progressive vector diagrams (PVD), were calculated at selected depths and the mean vertical current profiles that were averaged over the whole record.Residual or long-term vector-mean currents are readily apparent in the PVD diagrams, moreover rotational behavior of wave passage signals in horizontal current field are well presented as well (Emery and Thomson, 1998;Pugh, 1987).Figure 7 shows the mean current components profiles which were averaged over Introduction

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Interactive Discussion whole period of recording from 4 August to 28 September 2003.Both along and cross shelf circulations demonstrate almost one layer structure.The amplitude of the mean along shelf circulation is roughly 4 cm s −1 .Eastward motion is prevalence and decreases from the surface to the bottom in terms of magnitude.In cross-shelf direction, offshore motion is dominant and shows slightly decreasing trend i.e., from almost 2 cm s −1 (surface layer) to 0.5 cm s −1 (middle layer).The vertical structure of the profiles of the mean current components demonstrate the displacement of the entire water column in offshore and eastward which agrees in principal with mean sea breeze pattern inside the study area.Therefore despite the clear indications of the presence of the strong westward coastal jets which are not evidently could be attributed to the local winds, the long-term displacements of the water column follows the general circulation pattern in the southern CS.

Frequency domain
Spectral analyses were performed on the current and wind time series, which may vary due to the influence of local and remote winds, horizontal pressure gradient, etc. Autospectra are presented for ADCP data sets at bin 12 (1 m, surface layer), bin 6 (7 m, middle layer) and bin 1 (13 m, bottom layer) and wind data for both alongshore and cross-shore components.According to Fig. 8 diurnal and semi-diurnal peaks are much more evident in surface layer in comparison with the deeper ones.Consequently by descending across the depth from the surface layer to the bottom, diminishing the semidiurnal peak is evident.Overall, it is clear from spectral density that upper bins show relatively more energy among all frequency bands compared to the bottom layers.
Energy at high frequency oscillations are directly related to the wind stress.Spectral analysis of current time series in the southern CS reveals that the signals are principally constituted in order of importance by a low frequency signal (period greater than one day).The lower frequency events are primarily directed in the alongshore direction.Spectral density of surface, mid and bottom bins show distinguishable peaks in the range of 2.5 and 6 days which are pronounced in wind spectral density as well.Furthermore, 9.09 to 8.2 and 3.7 to 4.9 h periods are evident in current spectra.These periods have been suggested theoretically by Rabinovich (1973).He attributed them to one and two nodes barotropic seiches of the CS whilst it worth to mention that the resemblance periods were instrumentally recorded in the middle part of the CS (Kosarev, 1975).Moreover, 5.3 to 5.7 h periods were recorded in the middle part of the CS (Blatov and Vedev, 1990) based on the instrumental measurements.Although Rabinovich (1973) utilized a complicate shape for calculation of seiches, a simple box model for enclosed body of water is sufficient for the CS.The harmonics of the basic period for oscillations have two and more nodes given by Merian's formula: T s = 2L n gD, with L as the length of the box, D as average depth and n as the number of nodes (Pugh, 1987).Applying the Merian's formula to the southern CS, results a free oscillation period of about 4.9 h, that is pronounced in the current spectrum.Therefore 4.9 h peaks could be attributed to the seiches which are close to the basin-wide principal mode of seiches in southern CS.
As the auto-spectra suggests, there are basically two modes of motion at this site of the southern CS: 1) the motion in the diurnal and semidiurnal bands (attributed to sea breeze) which is generally dominated in cross-shore direction, and 2) the motion in the synoptic band that is mostly pronounced in alongshore direction.In general low-Introduction

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Full Screen / Esc Printer-friendly Version Interactive Discussion frequency (<0.02 cph; i.e., with periods >50 h), diurnal (∼0.04 cph) and semi-diurnal (∼0.08 cph), oscillations account for most of the variance.Under actual conditions in the surface sea layer, wind induced currents play a rather significant role.In the synoptic range of the current variability in the CS, oscillation with periods from 2-3 days to 1-3 weeks prevail (Baidin and Kosarev, 1986).They are related to the synoptic variability of the direct wind impact and to coastal trapped waves (Brink, 1991).In the higher frequency range, current variability is dominated by internal gravity waves and seiches (Tuzhilkin and Kosarev, 2005).
To shed some light on flow field characteristic in the study area, rotary power spectra of hourly filtered current data in three layers and the wind data are presented in Fig. 9.
According to the energy levels, variability seems to be more intense near the surface and this layer shows the best response to the sea breeze diurnal and semi-diurnal oscillations.In terms of the currents, diurnal and semi-diurnal bands are manifested in merely positive sense of rotation, showing that sea breeze forces anti-clockwise rotation.Wind rotary spectra, reveals that cyclonic rotation in diurnal and semi-diurnal bands is dominant in sea breeze as well.During the recording period, the 0.0156 cph (∼2.5 days) signal is distributed almost symmetrically around the zero frequency, illustrating that the motion is almost rectilinear at this frequency.Lower frequency signals (∼5 days and more periods) at the surface layer behave resemblance to the wind, so clockwise rotation is slightly stronger than cyclonic one.Conversely, in the middle layers signals distributions are symmetrical and in the deeper layers, strengthening of the positive sense of rotation is evident.All above findings indicate a prevalence of the rotational motion over the rectilinear ones, particularly in diurnal and semi-diurnal bands.
Presence of significant diurnal oscillation in the wind provide a favorable condition for the generation of the inertial oscillation (Jossia Joseph et al., 2007), which is quite true for the study area.Moreover, a strong thermocline which is located between 20 m and 50 m depths in warmer phase with 15 • C temperature gradient (Zaker et al., 2007), provides favorable condition for forming of inertial motions in the study area.In these Introduction

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Full Screen / Esc Printer-friendly Version Interactive Discussion circumstances inertial oscillations may persist for several days after their generation and be advected to the other regions.Therefore analogy to the middle part of the CS, which inertial oscillation with a period of 17.5 h was recorded (Bondarenko, 1994), we expected to come across the inertial currents with a period of oscillation of about 19.5 h (∼0.05 cph) in negative sense of rotation.But considering the proximity of the recording station to the coastal boundary, inertial signals are not manifested in the rotary power spectra.

Low frequency motion
The motion in low frequency synoptic band contains most of the energy of current fluctuations off FB (see Fig. 7).These low frequency oscillations particularly in the shelf wave band seem to be a substantial part of the flow field in the CS, since they were observed along the whole coast of the CS (Bondarenko, 1994), with amplitudes ranging between 15 and 20 cm s −1 .To facilitate relation between the low frequency motion and wind, the vertical structure for the coastal motion and wind is shown in the low frequency band in Fig. 10.The time series of the current amplitudes depict temporal variations, which follow resemblance trend with low pass component of the wind in alongshore direction.However in cross-shore direction, as it was expected, they do not show the same correspondence.Figure 10 demonstrates the coexistence of up and downward propagating phases of low frequency motions.This suggests that the motion is in phase from the surface to the bottom and also it remains constant along the water column.The current exhibits variations mostly with the time scale about 1.8, 2.5 and 6 days that is centered at the period of about 2.5 days.This motion is a pure barotropic one according to both the spectrum (Fig. 8) and the structure of the corresponding vertical distribution that revealed in the time series.However, these fluctuations are quasi-stationary since they are well pronounced in the entire measurement period.To achieve a better understanding of low frequency motions, the current data sets were vertically averaged and the resulted barotropic current was analyzed with rotary spectral analysis that has not been shown here.while diurnal and semi-diurnal motions were significantly rotated anti-clockwise, the barotropic motion in the shelf wave (low frequency) band and longer scales tended to be linear polarized.

Conclusion remarks
In this work, the ADCP and wind data sets have been analyzed to study the shelf circu- -Wind and sea breeze system is one of the forcing mechanisms that controls the water column dynamics in the southern CS.Wind hashing covers rather quickly water column of the continental shelf and promoting development of current from the surface to the bottom in one direction.The sea breeze dominates the energy input into the coastal system.Based on the recorded data, most of the wind energy is attributed to the low frequencies in alongshore direction, while in cross-shore the majority of wind energy is accumulated on 1 cpd and higher frequencies.Mean sea breeze vectors illustrates the existence of lasting south-east ward motive force over the study area.It is evident that the sea breeze system is present throughout the year and acts as the regular forcing in a similar manner to that of tides in other regions.-Flow field variation across the whole water column is showed a barotropic behavior and wind stress produced a similar response across the water column.Alongshore currents and wind are correlated to some extent in low frequencies while in cross-shore direction, the maximum correlation between currents and wind was occurred in 1 cpd and higher frequencies.Therefore, although in cross shelf the flow field is proportional to diurnal and semi-diurnal bands and higher frequency oscillations, the synoptical weather band seems to be more efficient in alongshore flow regime.
-While long-term displacements of the current components follow the classical circulation pattern in the south CS, the characteristics of the flow field with time variability on the order of several days is often very different.In fact, it is possible to find west ward current along the Iranian coast in the study area opposite to the general circulation pattern.There are clear indications of the presence of the strong west and east ward coastal jets which were not evidently generated by the local winds, since there was calm wind condition in the most case of the recording span.The signature of passing several days (2-6 days period) signals were easily distinguishable among the water column.It seems that investigating the local wind is not sufficient in order to completely understand the southern CS flow field.Our analyses showed that the strong quasi-stationary currents in wave form are dominant along the continental shelf in the region.In fact these pulses travel more rapidly than general flow field in the study area and could be explained by shelf-controlled waves.Therefore it could be postulated that the current field in the south CS, is under the influence of the long-period wave currents and remotely forced winds.In other words, generation of strong currents in absence of the wind could be related to shore-controlled long-waves which are remotely These findings confirm that in the shallow coastal waters off FB, two modes of motion can be distinguishable: high frequency motions (1 cpd and higher) that are mainly proportional to the sea breeze system and are generally dominant in cross-shore direction, and low frequency motions at synoptic weather bands in alongshore orientation.The low frequency motions are related to synoptic variability of the direct and remotely wind impacts and shelf-controlled long-period wave currents.According to the authors opinion the conventional concept that is indicating directly wind-induced currents in the CS as a closed sea systems are dominant, is not sufficient to illustrate properly the complicate flow field of this region.Full Conventionally southern, central and northern basins are distinguished.The Southern and the central basins of the CS have maximum water depths of 1025 and 788 m, respectively.These basins are , both may provoke noticeable winds over the southern parts of the CS.Wind stick plot together with the wind stress magnitude of hourly filtered wind data for first segment (720 h covering whole August 2003) and last segment (from 2000 h of records to the end from 24 October to 24 November 2003) are shown in Fig. 2. The maximum hourly speed of 18 m s −1 is recorded on 15 November 2003.August 2003, is characterized by relatively stable weather conditions with very few episodes of strong winds, which indeed not exceed than 15 m s −1 as an hourly value.Contrary to August, in September 2003, the weather conditions are characterized by relatively high variable winds in terms of frequency and duration.North and northwesterly winds are more evident, but still the sea breeze system is dominant and the maximum hourly speed does not exceed 15 m s −1 in the vein of the previous month.Considering the last Figure 6 illustrates the PVDs which have been constructed from successive cumulative values of u (alongshore), and v (cross-shore), components of current and wind from records gathered at 10-min intervals and filtered to one hour over the recording period from August to September 2003 among three distinguished depths.The plotted positions correspond to the horizontal displacement of the water parcel that would occur if the motion in the entire neighboring area of the location of the ADCP was uniform in spatial and temporal terms.The PVDs start in the lowest left hand corner (4 August) and wind up at upper right hand corner (28 September).The graphs show that motions among the different layers more or less are same and the flow field in the shelf is dominated by low frequency variations.The rotational behavior of the shelf motions are well represented in the diagrams.The signatures of passing several days (2-6 days) signals are easily notable among the water column particularly in the middle and the bottom layers.Although PVD of the surface layer demonstrates some resemblances with lower layers, due to water parcel track in the surface layer, it is rather decoupled from lower ones and mostly affected by local wind scheme.
, prevailing of the low-frequency signals in the current field during August and September 2003, are evident.Concurrently the current field contained the frequencies which are related to the sea breeze regime.The dominant peaks are in the low-frequency band at synoptic time scale of the order of several days.Classically the alongshore and cross-shore current spectra show roughly a similar amount of energy at the high frequencies (>0.08 cph), while the semidiurnal (∼0.08 cph) and diurnal (∼0.04) frequencies are shown mainly on the cross-shore spectrum (north-south current in the southern CS).The auto-spectra of different layersshow peak alongshore energy in the low frequencies synoptic band, while peak crossshore energy occurs in the diurnal and semidiurnal frequencies.According to Fig.8, cross-shore variability seems to be more intense near the surface layers.Therefore, lation and flow field off Freidoonkenar Bay (FB) in the southern part of the CS.Data sets were obtained during the Physical Oceanography Studies of Southern Coastal Waters of the Caspian Sea Project, accomplished by Iranian National Center for Oceanography (INCO), from August to September 2003.Filed data were collected along the shallow, wind-dominated coastal waters off FB from late summer to early autumn when the water column is stratified and vertically quasi-homogeneous, respectively.The data sets have been separated into three time-dependent terms: low frequency signals, diurnal and semidiurnal bands, and the high frequency parts.Additionally the current field has been divided into three layers: surface, middle and bottom.Based on the field data and analyses, it was concluded that: formed and forced in the other parts of the CS and travel across the shelf in the southern CS.Moreover remotely generated long-period pulses are reinforced and or suppressed by local winds.Therefore strong currents around 60 cm/sec occur by superposing of remotely and local forced motions.

Fig. 6 .
Fig. 6.Progressive vector diagram (PVD) of current and wind components from records obtained at 10 min intervals and hourly filtered data sets over 57 days measurement period.
AWS 2700, AANDERAA).The ADCP ping rate was set to 0.25 Hz, with 150 pings per ensemble, 6 cph recording interval and 12 depth bins (of 1 m) after 1 m blanking distance.The internal ping rate was set to 0.25 Hz; therefore in post-processing each 150 sample burst a total of 10 min records was averaged to log a single current velocity measurement.This qausi-rapid sampling permitted detailed observation of the velocity structure of the area.The ADCP was deployed on 4 km offshore of FB, on the south eastern coastal waters of the CS at the 14 m isobaths [36• 43.284 N, 52 • 33.127 E] for 57 days from August 2003 to September 2003.
The results confirmed that Introduction

Table 1 .
Apparently the long-period wave currents, whose velocities are much greater than the former one, are responsible for the majority of flow field variations.All this defines necessity of detailed theoretical studies (coupled with field surveys and numerical models) addressing to the flow field in the southern CS which for different reasons still are not accomplished properly.IntroductionKosarev, A. N., Trukhchev, D. I., andIvanov, V. P.: Seasonal features of general circulation in the Caspian deep water part, Meteorol.Hydrol.I, 91-99, 1997.Vali-Khodjeini, A.: Hydrology of the Caspian Sea and its problems.Proceedings of the Vienna Symposium, IAHS Publication, 1994.Introduction Mean variance and range of wind velocity.