In this paper, we analyze the bifurcation and the confluence of the Pacific western boundary currents by an analytical approach. Applying the conservation law, the geostrophic balance relation and the Bernoulli integral to a reduced gravity model, we get a quantitative relation for the outflow and the inflow, and establish the related formulae for the width and the veering angle of offshore currents under the inflow condition. Furthermore, a comparison between the volume transport based on the observation data and the analytical value for the Pacific western boundary currents is presented, which validates the theoretical analysis.
We investigate the nonlinear instability of a smooth steady density profile solution to the threedimensional nonhomogeneous incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the presence of a uniform gravitational field,including a Rayleigh-Taylor steady-state solution with heavier density with increasing height(referred to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability).We first analyze the equations obtained from linearization around the steady density profile solution.Then we construct solutions to the linearized problem that grow in time in the Sobolev space H k,thus leading to a global instability result for the linearized problem.With the help of the constructed unstable solutions and an existence theorem of classical solutions to the original nonlinear equations,we can then demonstrate the instability of the nonlinear problem in some sense.Our analysis shows that the third component of the velocity already induces the instability,which is different from the previous known results.
