Fig. 13

Drag-induced vorticity generation on a slope. Sketch of vorticity generation in an along-slope current V(x, z) for a uniform interior flow \(V_0\) and a turbulent bottom boundary layer over a slope with \(s = dz_b/dx\). The turbulent drag causes the bottom velocity to go to zero, leading to the local vertical profile V(z) (red) with a boundary-layer depth h and horizontal profile V(x) (blue) with vertical vorticity \(\zeta = dV/dx\) due to the velocity shear on the horizontal scale \(\ell _b = h/s\) (Molemaker et al. 2015)