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Moored Current Measurements in the Upper Ocean

  • Chapter
Air-Sea Interaction

Abstract

A goal of air-sea interaction studies is to parameterize the mixing processes in the atmospheric and oceanic boundary layers in a form suitable for inclusion in coupled ocean-atmosphere models. The parameterizations of upper ocean processes which are characterized by short time and small space scales are too crude at present to allow for their proper representation. The objective of particular studies is to compare the observed response of the upper ocean (i.e., the changes in velocity, temperature, and salinity distributions) with theoretical responses calculated on the basis of physical measurements and different upper ocean models. Though changes in the vertical distribution of temperature in the upper ocean produced by a storm have been documented (e.g., Tabata et al., 1965; Leipper, 1967), the vertical profile of wind-generated currents in the mixed layer and thermocline regions awaits adequate description. Wind-generated shears in the mixed layer greater than 0.01 s-1, which will contribute significantly to the turbulent energy budget (Pollard, 1977), have been observed on a few occasions (e.g., Gonella, 1971; Halpern, 1976; Perkins and Van Leer, 1977).

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Authors
  1. D. Halpern
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

    F. Dobson

  2. Meteorologisches Institut, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, German Federal Republic

    L. Hasse

  3. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California, USA

    R. Davis

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© 1980 Plenum Press, New York

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Halpern, D. (1980). Moored Current Measurements in the Upper Ocean. In: Dobson, F., Hasse, L., Davis, R. (eds) Air-Sea Interaction. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9182-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9182-5_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4615-9184-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-9182-5

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