Some Aspects of the Internal Tide in Knight Inlet, British Columbia

Abstract

The interaction of the tides with the sill of Knight Inlet, a fjord located on the coast of British Columbia, is investigated. The seasonal variation in the stratification of the inlet causes a large seasonal variation in the power withdrawn from the barotropic tide. Usually, most of the withdrawn tidal power can be accounted for by a simple model of the internal tide. Obviously, the model composition of the internal tide in an inlet is a function both of the inlet topography and the stratification. In particular, when there is a thin but distinct surface layer, caused possibly by river runoff, both first and second modes can transport significant amounts of energy away from the sill. When this is the case, the surface layer as well as the underlying stratification must be taken into account when calculating the amount of energy being transported by the internal tide.