Reconstruction of Johnston Atoll's wake from longline drifts observed during February 1968.

The right figure shows the orientation and the background current, which was about 0.5 m s-1 towards north west (numbers are in m s-1). The left figure shows the reconstructed eddy field in a coordinate system relative to the mean flow (which goes to the left, but the figure is drawn as if Johnston Atoll were dragged through the water towards the right, pulling the wake behind it).

Red arrows indicate observed longline drifts (the central part is the set longline, the arrows on either side indicate the movement of the two ends of the longline). Blue arrows indicate the drift of the ship. Black lines give the inferred streamlines. Pink eddies rotate clockwise, green eddies anti-clockwise. The entire vortex street moved towards 320° at 0.45 m s-1. After Barkley (1972).


© 1996 M. Tomczak

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