Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

ORCID

0000-0001-6519-1547

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans

ISSN

2169-9291

Publication Date

3-15-2001

Keywords

Equatorial oceanography, Turbulence diffusion and mixing processes, Upper ocean and mixed layer processes

Abstract

Vertical profiles of zonal velocity and the dissipation rate ε of the turbulent kinetic energy obtained during the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) are analyzed in the context of planetary boundary layer relationships previously derived from atmospheric measurements. The presence of a barrier layer and the striking effect of increased dimensionless shear and ε at the bottom of the surface mixed layer of the ocean, features often observed in the western Pacific warm pool area, are consistent with the boundary layer laws. The gradient Richardson number Ri is found to be a convenient parameter for scaling the nonstationary and horizontally heterogeneous mixed layer in the warm pool area. The approach to parameterization of the turbulent eddy coefficient within the mixed layer as a function of Ri is tested as part of a one-dimensional model. A comparison between the observed and modeled upper ocean temperatures for two COARE examples shows a reasonable agreement over a wide range of wind speed conditions.

DOI

10.1029/2000JC900154

Volume

106

Issue

C3

First Page

4421

Last Page

4435

Comments

©2001 by the American Geophysical Union.

An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 2001 American Geophysical Union.

Soloviev, A., R. Lukas, and P. Hacker (2001), An approach to parameterization of the oceanic turbulent boundary layer in the western Pacific warm pool, J. Geophys. Res., 106(C3), 4421–4435, doi:10.1029/2000JC900154. To view the published open abstract, go to http://dx.doi.org and enter the DOI.

Additional Comments

NSF grant #s:OCE-9113948, OCE-9525986, OCE-9730643

Peer Reviewed

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