Boiling Water in the Strait of Gibraltar

The Strait of Gibraltar has great impact on the environment of the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. It also makes an important contribution to the formation of the global oceanic circulation supplying nutrient-rich salty waters from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. A strong tidal forcing is superimposed on the mean current and plays a fundamental role in the dynamics of the Strait. The present study will examine the role of high baroclinic modes in baroclinic tidal dynamics of the Strait of Gibraltar. Contradictory results obtained recently by different researchers in their attempts to describe the effect of 'boiling water' give rise to a hard debate over the interpretation of observational data. This debate was a strong motivation for the present study. The proposal is aimed to fill the gap in understanding of physical processes of generation of strongly-nonlinear baroclinic tides through the application of advanced numerical baroclinic tidal model to the Strait of Gibraltar, for which unique observational data were collected by the University of Cadiz (Spain). The achievement of the basic goal will lead to an understanding of the energy cascading from the barotropic tidal flux to internal waves, and further transformation to shorter solitary waves and turbulence in the conditions of extremely strong baroclinic tidal activity when observed amplitudes of internal waves reach record value of one hundred metres.