Spatial evolution cold-water bottom lenses in the shelf zone of the Sea of Japan

The propagation and destruction of nonlinear internal waves in the summer-autumn period at the hydrophysical test site of the Pacific Oceanological Institute, FEB RAS in the shelf zone of the Sea of Japan have been studied for a number of years. By continuous measurement of vertical temperature and velocity distribution at depths of 20–60 m using bottom stations and by a regular study of the distributions of the main hydrodynamic characteristics along selected paths, mechanisms have been determined for the generation and propagation of nonlinear packets of internal waves due to internal tide decay and other short-period sources of thermocline deformation have been detected that can be attributed to the propagation of benthic and surface vortex structures. High spatiotemporal resolution of the temperature field in the neighborhood of bottom stations made it possible to reveal the fine structure of wave perturbations of various types. Multilayer shallow-water models for wave-packet propagation have been developed and verified using the data of full-scale and laboratory experiments.