Wind-driven circulation in coastal and marginal seas

This paper considers the spatial and temporal detail in knowledge of the wind that is required to estimate various consequences of wind forcing: coastal trapped waves, sea-surface fluxes related to the frequency spectrum, storm surges, coastal downwelling and upwelling, wind-stress curl and downwelling or upwelling, wakes and stratification, diurnal and seasonal stratification, coastal currents and plumes, sea breeze effects, and surface waves. For many of these phenomena, winds need to be resolved on scales of the order 10 km (related to topographically induced structure) and 1-3 h (owing to rapid and non-linear responses). Relative errors in wind speed are typically multiplied by 2 or 3 for momentum inputs and mixing effects, respectively, which are particularly dependent on peak wind speeds (requiring correspondingly fine temporal resolution).