Finescale Water-Mass Variability from ARGO Profiling Floats
Abstract
My main interests are in small-scale ocean physics processes that contribute to stirring and mixing in order to understand and parameterize their impact on larger scales. This includes phenomena ranging from the microscale (1 cm) up to the mesoscale (10-100 km). These funds are to be used to explore fine-scale water-mass variability in ARGO float data with particular attention to horizontal and temporal coherence in fine-structure and fine-scale density ratios R = Tz/ Sz. ARGO profiling float data is being downloaded from its archive and catalogued. Temperature T and salinity S data will be used to compute density , density ratio R and stratification N2. Time/space means will be computed on isopycnals and water-mass anomaly statistics and vertical wavenumber spectra relative to these means accumulated. Coherence of the spectral quantities will be examined laterally and temporally with the expectation that the finescale will be incoherent on even short horizontal and time scales (Ferrari and Polzin 2005). Given the limited funding available and the effort required for initial cataloging of the data, analysis will focus on the North (Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal) and equatorial Indian Ocean because of ONR s interest in this region, and the Okinawa Trough for comparison with glider data collected by Craig Lee for the Kuroshio QPE. Time and resources permitting, the data cataloging and analysis will expand to the whole Indian Ocean. Profile data from 1999-2011 have been downloaded from the ARGO float website from the Indian Ocean and Okinawa Trough. Software has been written for a first look at the data in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea (Fig. 1).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA590612
Entities
People
- Eric Kunze
Organizations
- University of Washington