Coastal Meteorology and Wind-Forced Coastal Ocean Currents

The work of John S. Allen and others has established that coastal winds are a primary forcing agent for coastal ocean currents. In the last several decades, considerable progress has been made in the observation and analysis of coastal wind fields. For many years, information on coastal winds was limited to point measurements from coastal stations and moored buoys, supplemented by ship and aircraft observations, and products derived from large-scale atmospheric pressure analyses. The limitations of these characterizations for estimating wind stress over the U.S. west-coast shelf have been dramatically illustrated by thorough comparisons of the various estimates, and by the results of focused observational programs in the coastal zone. Recently, wind stress fields measured by satellite scatterometers and derived from mesoscale atmospheric models have become available. The availability of these fields offers exciting new opportunities, and is leading to new advances in understanding, but important challenges and uncertainties remain. These uncertainties have implications for the future of coastal ocean modeling.