Upwelling is Counterintuitive

For some reason wind blowing parallel to the beach causes the surface water to move at a right angle and go offshore, the void is filled by the deep cold water from below. It has something to do with the earths rotation but for the life of me I can't remember that far back to college level oceanography.

 

same reason the water spins down your toilet when you flush

 

It's got to have something to do with No. Jerz having so much east-facing coastline to which southerlies are true sideshore winds. I initially thought the same as you with all things south bringing warmer things this way. But a warmer wind isn't going to heat up such a substantial volume of water very much. It seems to be all about the nutrient-rich water rising up from the deep and that's water that is too deep to absorb heat from the sun or ambient air.

Micah, I think you've had good responses to this in the past. What's good bro?

 

Nutrient concentration

 

this is basically true.
if you don't get it try thinking in three dimensions (L+H+W) as opposed to two.
if you figure it out please answer THIS question:
why must the hammer fall on so jersey??

 

Courtesy of our friends at NOAA... http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ph...s=standard&timezone=GMT&id=8534720&interval=6

 

Displacement of water. When the upper layer of water moves in one direction, something has to take its place…hence the lower layer takes its place.

 

You're gonna have to forgive my extreme dorky-ness... but the answer is, we really don't know for sure. That's because most of the studies on upwelling were done on the California coast, not here, and so there's not been adequate research and data collection to explain the subtleties of how it works along the Mid Atlantic Bight.

But we do know this... the tremendous amount of variation along our coastline (the MAB) creates variations in upwelling patterns, different angles of the shoreline not being the only factor. Perhaps of more significance is the outflow of more buoyant water from rivers, bays, and estuaries, where lower salinity and higher temperature creates disturbances in the typical upwelling patterns. If this interests you, look up ekman transport, and read this article... http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0485(2003)033<1954:TCPDAU>2.0.CO;2

 

wow - i read it. i had to go get an engineering degree to do so but still back before lunch.
two things stand out:

1) alongshore flow. the water level basically does not rise but if the 'flow goes' it must
be replaced somehow.
2) bottom friction. to me this explains (to me) why the onset and degradation (of the phenom) are slow.
3) todays oc cam shows fine surf with no one out. makes sense to me.

anyway thank you lbcrew for that as i now see a bit clearer.

 

Interesting stuff. The way everything all pans out on this planet is fu*king amazing.

 

I answered this question in a post from 2007:
http://www.swellinfo.com/forum/showthread.php?911-upwelling-question&p=2319#post2319

Short answer. Coriolis Force.

I talked to someone researching this upwelling phenomenon at the University of Delaware, and she told me the water that is upwelled is pools of water that is actually stored in areas right off the coast from the winter time.

 

Definitely winter time yesterday.... 47 degrees.

Curious though even though upwelling is mainly a short term event, when you get such a drastic change like we have had in moco for the last few days, shouldn't SI make note of it in the report? The temp still shows 68 degrees....

 

Say what?! Thats sounds awful, old man winter is always lurking in the Northeast...

 

i caught a chill just reading that.

 

south wind means the wind is coming from the north blowing towards the south,so we basically get nova scotia temps.

 

BahahahahahHa

 

I mean, OP asked for a simplified response, seems like he nailed it