The coastal ocean is a complex region affected by several processes with various spatiotemporal scales such as tidal flows, internal waves (IW)s, along-shore, and cross-shore (XS) winds, buoyancy-driven flows, and surface waves. IWs have important implications for pollutant dispersal, nutrient supply, energy budgets, and ecosystem impacts of climate change in the coastal zone. IWs are generated by the acceleration of the tidal flows over sloped bathymetry, which results in a phase lag between pressure and velocity and effectively converts tidal energy from barotropic to baroclinic. This energy conversion propagates in the system in the form of density perturbations or IWs. The generation of IWs over the continental shelf and their advection into nearshore areas have been studied extensively. Moreover, the modification of coastal dynamics by sea breeze (XS transport by XS wind in the inner-shelf) and regional-scale (upwelling/downwelling by alongshore wind) have received considerable attention in the past few decades. However, the generation of IWs in the nearshore and how such a generation is affected by winds and other tidal components have received much less attention, even though this is the region where IWs often have the highest impact. In addition, the coupling of XS wind and tidal currents in the inner-shelf where the XS wind is more effective in deriving XS transport (in comparison to the alongshore wind) has been neglected. Therefore, in this dissertation, I 1) develop a robust mathematical formulation to calculate the barotropic to baroclinic energy conversion, which filters the residual conversion, 2) examine the interaction of tidal flows with various periods (i.e., diurnal and semi-diurnal) and parameters that affect such interaction, and 3) elucidate the role of the wind in the energy conversion process for shallow coastal regions.
