Modeling internal solitary waves on the Australian north west shelf

The transformation of nonlinear internal waves and the development of internal solitary waves on the Australian North West Shelf is studied numerically in the framework of the generalized Korteweg–de Vries equation. This model contains both nonlinearity (quadratic and cubic), the Coriolis effect, depth variation and horizontal variability of the density stratification. The computed results demonstrate that a wide variety of nonlinear wave shapes can be explained by the synergetic action of cubic nonlinearity and the variability of the hydrology along the wave path.