American Geophysical Union Become an AGU Member
Subscribe to AGU Journals		 AGU Home AGU Publications

Subscriber Access to Full Article (Nonsubscribers may purchase for $9.00, Includes print PDF, file size: 345613 bytes)

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L19609, doi:10.1029/2006GL027268, 2006

Similarity relationships in the unstable aquatic surface layer

A. Anis

Departments of Marine Sciences and Oceanography, Texas A&M University, Galveston, Texas, USA


Abstract

Turbulence mixing in aquatic surface layers controls the exchange of energy, momentum, heat, and mass between the atmosphere and the water beneath it. In many instances, due to a lack of suitable observations, scaling laws from atmospheric surface layers over land have been “borrowed” to model turbulence in oceans and lakes. However, it is unclear to what extent, and under what forcing conditions, atmospheric scaling laws are valid in aquatic surface layers. Here we present unique observations of the vertical structure of two key turbulence parameters, the dissipation of turbulence kinetic energy and the dissipation of temperature fluctuations, when the aquatic surface layer was forced by a combination of wind stirring and heat loss to the atmosphere. The good agreement found with scaling laws in atmospheric surface layers, under similar forcing and stability conditions, provides new evidence linking the structure of turbulence in aquatic and atmospheric surface layers.

Received 18 June 2006; accepted 5 September 2006; published 10 October 2006.

Index Terms: 4568 Oceanography: Physical: Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes (4490); 4524 Oceanography: Physical: Fine structure and microstructure; 4504 Oceanography: Physical: Air/sea interactions (0312, 3339); 4239 Oceanography: General: Limnology (0458, 1845, 4942); 4247 Oceanography: General: Marine meteorology.

Subscriber Access to Full Article (Nonsubscribers may purchase for $9.00, Includes print PDF, file size: 345613 bytes)

Citation: Anis, A. (2006), Similarity relationships in the unstable aquatic surface layer, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L19609, doi:10.1029/2006GL027268.