Eddy diffusivity: a single dispersion analysis of high resolution drifters in a tidal shallow estuary

摘要: In an estuary, mixing and dispersion resulting from turbulence small scale fluctuation has strong spatio-temporal variability which cannot be resolved in conventional hydrodynamic models while some employs parameterizations large water bodies. This paper presents diffusivity estimates high resolution drifters sampled at 10 Hz for periods of about 4 h to resolve shear within a tidal shallow estuary (depth 0.9) on the horizontal mean velocity channel. Enhanced caused by interaction flow with boundary geometries was observed. Turbulence channel showed similarities layer include consistency slope 5/3 predicted Kolmogorov’s similarity hypothesis inertial subrange. The diffusivities locally 4/3 power law following Okubo’s scaling length scales as 3/2 time scale. herein suggests that modelling estuaries can approached classical upon identifying pertinent parameters.