In this contribution, the authors present their preliminary investigations into modeling the rainfall–runoff generation relation in a large subtropical catchment (Jiulong River catchment) on the southeast coast of China. Previous studies have mostly focused on modeling the streamflow and water quality of its small rural subcatchments. However, daily runoff on the scale of the whole catchment has not been modeled before, and hourly runoff data are desirable for some oceanographic applications. Three methods are proposed for modeling streamflow using rainfall outputted by the Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model, calculated potential evaporation (PET), and land cover type: (i) a ridge regression model; (ii) NPRED-KNN: a nonparametric k-nearest neighbor model (KNN) employing a parameter selection method (NPRED) based on partial information coefficient; (iii) the Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) model with an hourly time step. Results show that the NPRED-KNN approach is the most unsuitable method of those tested. The HSPF model was manually calibrated, and ridge regression performs no worse than HSPF based on daily verification, whilst HSPF can produce realist daily flow time series, of which ridge regression is incapable. The HSPF model seems less prone to systematic underprediction when replicating monthly-annual water balance, and it successfully replicates the baseflow index (the flow intensity) of the Jiulong River catchment system.

The global supply of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) is sourced from a handful of dense overflows. Observations from the Weddell Sea indicate that the overflow there exhibits prominent oscillations accompanied by dense eddies, while the Ross Sea overflow shows no significant oscillations other than tides, yet the genesis of these oscillations and their role in mediating AABW export remain poorly understood. Here idealized model simulations are used to investigate the dynamics of these oscillations. It is shown that the dominant oscillations result from the formation of Topographic Rossby waves (TRWs) associated with baroclinic instability of the dense overflow. A key finding is that the TRWs can feed back onto the dense overflow, producing coherent subsurface eddies of the same frequency. A series of sensitivity experiments reveal that these behaviors depend strongly on the local environment: steep topographic slopes suppress the baroclinic growth of TRWs, while strong downstream along‐slope flows suppress the upstream propagation of TRW energy and genesis of subsurface eddies. These results explain the varying prevalence of different oscillatory phenomena observed across different dense overflow regimes.

Antarctic Bottom Water is primarily formed via overflows of dense shelf water (DSW) around the Antarctic continental margins. The dynamics of these overflows therefore influence the global abyssal stratification and circulation. Previous studies indicate that dense overflows can be unstable, energizing Topographic Rossby Waves (TRW) over the continental slope. However, it remains unclear how the wavelength and frequency of the TRWs are related to the properties of the overflowing DSW and other environmental conditions, and how the TRW properties influence the downslope transport of DSW. This study uses idealized high-resolution numerical simulations to investigate the dynamics of overflow-forced TRWs and the associated downslope transport of DSW. It is shown that the propagation of TRWs is constrained by the geostrophic along-slope flow speed of the DSW and by the dynamics of linear plane waves, allowing the wavelength and frequency of the waves to be predicted a priori. The rate of downslope DSW transport depends nonmonotonically on the slope steepness: steep slopes approximately suppress TRW formation, resulting in steady, frictionally-dominated DSW descent. For slopes of intermediate steepness, the overflow becomes unstable and generates TRWs, accompanied by interfacial form stresses that drive DSW downslope relatively rapidly. For gentle slopes, the TRWs lead to the formation of coherent eddies that inhibit downslope DSW transport. These findings may explain the variable properties of TRWs observed in oceanic overflows, and imply that the rate at which DSW descends to the abyssal ocean depends sensitively on the manifestation of TRWs and/or nonlinear eddies over the continental slope.