Volume Transport on the Texas-Louisiana Continental Shelf

Seasonal volume transport on the Texas-Louisiana continental shelf is investigated in terms of objectively fitted transport streamfunction fields based on the current meter data of the Texas­Louisiana Shelf Circulation and Transport Processes Study. Adopted here for the objective mapping is a method employing a two-dimensional truncated Fourier representation of the streamfunction over a domain, with the amplitudes determined by least square fit of the observation. The fitting was done with depth-averaged flow rather than depth-integrated flow to reduce the root-mean-square error. The fitting process filters out $11\%$ of the kinetic energy in the monthly mean transport fields. The shelf-wide pattern of streamfunction fields is similar to that of near-surface velocity fields over the region. The nearshore transport, about 0.1 to 0.3 Sv $(1 Sv= 10^6\;m^3/sec)$, is well correlated with the seasonal signal of along-shelf wind stress. The spring transport is weak compared to other seasons in the inner shelf region. The transport along the shelf break is large and variable. In the southwestern shelf break, transport amounts up to 4.7 Sv, which is associated with the activities of the encroaching of energetic anticyclonic eddies originated in Loop Current of the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The first empirical orthogonal function (EOF) of streamfunction variability contains $67.3\%$ of the variance and shows a simple, shelf-wide, along-shelf pattern of transport. The amplitude evolution of the first EOF is highly correlated (correlation coefficient: 0.88) with the evolution of the along-shelf wind stress. This provides strong evidence that the large portion of seasonal variation of the shelf transport is wind-forced. The second EOF contains $23.7\%$ of the variance and shows eddy activities at the southwestern shelf break. The correlation coefficient between the amplitudes of the second EOF and wind stress is 0.42. We assume that this mode is coupled a periodic inner shelf process with a non-periodic eddy process on the shelf break. The third EOF (accounting for $7.2\% of the variance) shows several cell structures near the shelf break associated with the variability of the Loop Current Eddies. The amplitude time series of the third EOF show little correlation with the along-shelf wind.