A Feature Model for Arctic Upper Ocean Thermal Structure
Abstract
The radiation balance at high latitudes is dominated by presence or absence of snow and ice which affects the albedo in a great deal. Any oceanic processes that affect the snow and ice cover in polar regions will cause the change of deposition of sun's energy over the earth's surface, and hence the environmental change. Besides, the ice cover, ocean, and atmosphere exchange water mass and energy in a very complicated way. Three major feedback loops (both positive and negative), in which the upper ocean is a key component, possibly exist in a theoretical air-ice-ocean coupled system (Chu, 1990). Thus, investigation of the polar upper ocean thermal structure from observation becomes urgent. Up until now, the effort is limited to study some individual data set, e.g., AIDJEX, MIZEX, CEAREX, etc., separately. No investigation is pursued for the Arctic upper ocean thermal structure from the all available data sets. This study deals with the most complete temperature and salinity data sets in the Arctic Ocean, which is the U.S. Navy's Master Oceanographic Data sets (MOODS). To get physical insights from the data, we use a feature model (Haeger, 1994) to transfer each MOODS Arctic temperature (or salinity) profile into a set of several characteristics: sea surface temperature (SST), mixed layer depth, thermocline depth, temperature difference across the thermocline. These characteristics reveal strong term poral and spatial variabilities.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA530525
Entities
People
- Peter Cheng Chu
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School