On the Establishment of the Seasonal Pycnocline in the Middle Atlantic Bight

Abstract

Each year the hydrography of the Middle Atlantic Bight changes dramatically from winter conditions with strong horizontal gradients of temperature, salinity, and density at the shelf break separating shelf and slope waters to the summer stratification with a sharp pycnocline at about 20-m depth across both the shelf and slope and weak horizontal density gradients. We use a simple one-dimensional diffusion model to demonstrate that this change could result from a uniform surface heating provided that the nonlinearity of the equation of state is taken into account.