The physics of the coastal ocean and atmosphere, and the processes that couple them, are of particular interest to me and to many of my colleagues at COAS. My recent research in the area has focused on air-sea interaction and the coupling between wind stress and sea surface temperature. For example, Perlin et al. (JPO, accepted) find that in simulations of coastal upwelling using a coupled ocean-atmosphere model, wind stress over the inner shelf may be reduced by half by the interaction of the oceanic and atmospheric surface boundary layers.
Perlin, N, E. Skyllingstad, R. Samelson, and P. Barbour. Numerical simulation of air-sea coupling during coastal upwelling. Journal of Physical Oceanography, accepted. pdf file
Chelton, D. B., M. G. Schlax and R.M. Samelson. Summertime coupling between sea surface temperature and wind stress in the California Current System. Journal of Physical Oceanography, accepted. pdf file
Durski, S., J. S. Allen, G. D. Egbert, and R. M. Samelson. Scale evolution of finite amplitude instabilities on a coastal upwelling front. Journal of Physical Oceanography, accepted. pdf file
Samelson, R. M., E. D. Skyllingstad, D. B. Chelton, S. K. Esbensen, L. W. O'Neill, and N. Thum, 2006. A note on the coupling of wind stress and sea surface temperature. Journal of Climate, 19, 1557-1566. article
Skyllingstad, E., D. Vickers, L. Mahrt, and R. Samelson, 2006. Effects of mesoscale sea-surface temperature fronts on the marine boundary layer. Boundary Layer Meteorology, DOI 10.1007/s10546-006-9127-8. article
Bane, J. M., M. D. Levine, R. M. Samelson, S. M. Haines, M. F. Meaux, N. Perlin, P. M. Kosro, and T. Boyd, 2005. Atmospheric forcing of the Oregon coastal ocean during the 2001 upwelling season. Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans, 110, C10S02, doi:10.1029/2004JC002653. pdf file
Choboter, P. F., R. M. Samelson, and J. S. Allen, 2005. A new solution of a nonlinear model of upwelling. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 35, 532-544. article
Gan, J., J. S. Allen, and R. M. Samelson, 2005. On open boundary conditions for a limited-area coastal model off Oregon. Part II: Response to wind forcing from a regional mesoscale atmospheric model. Ocean Modelling, 8, 155-173, 10.1016/j.ocemod.2003.12.007. pdf file
Kuebel Cervantes, B. T., J. S. Allen, and R. M. Samelson, 2004. Lagrangian characteristics of continental shelf flows forced by periodic wind stress. Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 11, 3-16. pdf file
Perlin, N., R. M. Samelson, and D. B. Chelton, 2004. Scatterometer and model wind and wind stress in the Oregon - northern California coastal zone. Monthly Weather Review, 132, 2110-2129. article