Abstract:
Ierley's regional model of a single-gyre wind-driven circulation is an interesting compromise between the need to account for flow nonlinearity and its Sverdrupian behaviour far from the western area of the basin. The model assumes a priori that current intensification is westwards, but it can be easily reformulated, as the authors do, by setting the intensification region at the east. However, in this case the energetics of the flow exhibits an inconsistency that shows that westward intensification has no alternative. This is in accordance with all the previous conclusions on the subject but, for the first time, with the novelty of having taken into account also the nonlinear character of the flow outside the Sverdrupian area.