On large-scale oceanic wind-drift currents

Abstract: Starting from the Navier--Stokes equations in rotating spherical coordinates with constant density and eddy viscosity varying only with depth, and appropriate, physically motivated boundary conditions, we derive an asymptotic model for the description of non-equatorial wind-generated oceanic drift currents. We do not invoke any tangent-plane approximations, thus allowing for large-scale flows that would not be captured by the classical $f$-plane approach. The strategy is to identify two small intrinsic scales for the flow (namely, the ratio between the depth of the Ekman layer and the Earth's radius, and the Rossby number) and, after a careful scaling, perform a double asymptotic expansion with respect to these small parameters. This leads to a system of linear ordinary differential equations with nonlinear boundary conditions for the leading-order dynamics, in addition to which we identify the governing equations for the first-order correction with respect to the Rossby number. First, we establish the existence and uniqueness of the solution to the leading-order equations and show that the solution behaves like a classical Ekman spiral for any eddy viscosity profile; moreover, we discuss the solution of the equations for the first-order correction, for which we also provide a priori bounds in terms of the leading-order solution. Finally, we discuss several cases of explicit eddy viscosity profiles (constant, linearly decreasing, linearly increasing, piecewise linear, and exponentially decaying) and compute the surface deflection angle of the wind-drift current. We obtain results that are remarkably consistent with observations.