A model study of the effects of river discharges and interannual variation of winds on the plume front in winter in Pearl River Estuary

A three-dimensional numerical model, Estuarine, Coastal and Ocean Modeling System with Sediments (ECOMSED), is employed to study the mechanism of plume front in the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) in detail. The model is forced by winds, tides and river discharges. The modeled results of tidal elevation, current velocity and salinity are in reasonable agreement with observational data in the PRE. By analyzing momentum and saltwater transport balance equations, it is found that the wind stress term, the pressure gradient term and the local time derivative term of velocity are dominant in the momentum equation, while the local time derivative term, the horizontal advective term and the vertical mixing term of salinity are dominant in the salinity transport equation. The residual current at surface along the plume front is seaward and stronger, whilst that in the bottom layer is mainly landward. A series of sensitive experiments is also run to examine the responses of plume front to changes of river discharges at different inlets in Lingdingyang Bay and interannual variation of northeast winds in winter. The location of plume front responds differently to the change of river discharge at different inlets. An increase in the river discharge at Dahu inlet seems to affect the location of plume front most among the four river inlets, it makes the plume front move eastward and southward wholly; the variation of river discharge at Nansha or Fengmamiao inlet on the location of plume front is more local and weaker; whilst the variation of river discharge at Hengmen inlet has little effect on the plume front. The location of plume front also changes in response to the interannual variation of northeast winds in winter, the stronger or the more eastward the winds are, the more westward the plume front moves, and only in the northern PRE, the response of plume front to the variation of wind speeds is largely different from that to the variation of wind directions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.