Wind-driven currents in a sea with a variable eddy viscosity calculated via a Sinc-Galerkin technique

Abstract

The Sinc–Galerkin method is presented as a new and potentially useful extension of the spectral method in numerical oceanography. To describe and illustrate the technique, a Sinc–Galerkin procedure is used to infer the sensitivity of wind-driven sub-surface currents in coastal regions and semi-enclosed seas when the vertical eddy viscosity coefficient is represented as a continuously differentiable function of depth. Problems with exact solutions are used to explore the accuracy and exponential convergence of expansions using composite translated sinc functions as a basis set. To illustrate the essential idea, we describe applications of the Sinc–Galerkin technique to modifications of the Ekman wind-drift current problem. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.