Topographic filtering

Tides: Topographic filtering

A topographic irregularity (particularly a continental shelf or ocean ridge) may act as a spectral (often low-pass) filter for incident long waves, which is evident through its presence in the potential of a Schrödinger equation. For some circumstances, however, the potential is reflectionless, and the shelf region behind a slope becomes vulnerable to incident long waves satisfying the corresponding criteria.
For a typical shelf-slope topography (upper pannel) the localized nature of the scattering potential of the Schrödinger equation into which the problem can be cast is shown below.

Publications:
Maas, L.R.M. (1996) Topographic filtering and reflectionless transmission of long waves. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 27: 195-202.