P-Vector Spirals and Determination of Absolute Velocities

Abstract

A simple method to invert the absolute geostrophic velocity on potential-density surfaces is developed based on McDougall's (1988) conservation statements on potential-density surfaces and Chu's (1995) and McDougall's (1995) P-vector concept. This method has a capability to handle a system with diapycnal velocities and non-coincidence of potential-density and neutral surfaces. The validity of the inversion is the existence of the P-vector spirals instead of the existence of the velocity spirals (usually called the Beta-spirals). We use a climatological T, S dataset for the Atlantic Ocean from the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) to show the benefit of using P-vector spirals in inverting the velocity field.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2000
Accession Number
ADA480545

Entities

People

  • Peter Cheng Chu

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Atlantic Ocean
  • Cartesian Coordinates
  • Data Centers
  • Data Sets
  • Equations
  • Geostrophic Currents
  • Grids
  • Gulf Stream
  • High Resolution
  • Inversion
  • North Atlantic Ocean
  • Ocean Currents
  • Oceanography
  • Oceans
  • Pacific Ocean
  • South China Sea
  • Stratified Fluids

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Calculus or Mathematical Analysis
  • Oceanography.
  • Software Engineering.