Negative storm surges in the Río de la Plata Estuary: Mechanisms, variability, trends and linkage with the Continental Shelf dynamics

Abstract

Negative storm surge (NSS) events frequently affect the Río de la Plata Estuary (RdP), limiting the access to major ports and waterways and emptying the freshwater intakes of one of the most socially developed basins of the Southwestern Atlantic Continental Shelf (SWACS). It is important to re-examine this issue, as the available studies are outdated, there are some contradictions in the literature and a regional framework of the adjacent shelf dynamics is not yet available. In this work () nonlinear statistical analyses were applied to review and update the climatological description of NSS in the RdP; and, then, () an ocean numerical model was employed to describe and understand the surge dynamics framed into the larger scale dynamics of the atmospherically forced SWACS. An analysis of 87 years of hourly residual sea level observations (RSL) reveals that the number of yearly NSS events time series presents () a statistically significant multidecadal non-linear trend or envelope and () two significant pseudo-cycles centred at 3.5 and 11.5 years that explain a largefraction of the interannual variability embedded in the multidecadal modulation.Numerical simulations results show that the surges (both negative and positive) that are generated in the SWACS and reach the RdP result from the passage of atmospheric planetary waves over Patagonia which produce winds with a significant alongshore (N-S) component. These winds force an Ekman transport either offshore or onshore at the coast, generating a negative or positive sea level anomaly, which will be larger as the atmospheric system is slower and more persistent. When synoptic atmospheric systems migrate away from the coast on their northeastward propagation, the forced sea level anomalies propagate along the coast to the north as free Kelvin waves, eventually reaching the estuary; thus the forcing for surges at the RdP can be remote. In this sense, despite the large gulfs and bays, the response of the Patagonian coast is similar to that of a linear coastline oriented in a north–south direction. In addition to remotely forced surges, locally forced events occur in the RdP as a result of the estuarine geometry and its resonant response to winds with a component longitudinal to the estuary axis (NW-SE), which could be forced by other atmospheric configurations besides Rossby waves, such as cyclogenesis of the Argentine Littoral.