While many of the alongshore coastal ocean currents are explicable in term of wind forcing, the cross-shelf currents have posed problems for theoretical models. This proposal will consider the fluctuations in the alongshore wind field at small scales as forcing elements in the generation of cross-shelf currents. Wind data from aircraft used in the Coastal Ocean Dynamics Experiment (CODE) will be analyzed for the wavenumber- frequency content, and the output used to force a linear ocean of the coastal regime.
