The vorticity balance on the southern British Columbia continental shelf

Abstract

An array of moored current meters was deployed over a canyon system on the British Columbia continental shelf in the spring of 1985 and maintained for 110 days. The array was specifically designed to monitor the various terms in the vorticity budget.The observations indicate that the substantial variations in vorticity with time are being driven by vertical velocities originating from the head of a small canyon. These vertical velocities are in turn being directly driven by deep northward flows along the axis of the canyon and these latter flows are closely related to the southward shelf‐edge‐flow. © 1989 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.