P-Vector Spirals and Determination of Absolute Velocities

A simple method to invert the absolute geostrophic velocity on potential-density surfaces is developed based on McDougall's (1988) conservation statements on potential-density surfaces and Chu's (1995) and McDougall's (1995) P-vector concept. This method has a capability to handle a s...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Chu, Peter C.
Other Authors: NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY CA
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2000
Subjects:
Physical and Dynamic Oceanography
*OCEAN CURRENTS
VELOCITY
HYDROGRAPHY
NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN
GEOSTROPHIC CURRENTS
REPRINTS
ABSOLUTE VELOCITY
DIAPYCNAL VELOCITY
INVERSE METHOD
P-VECTOR SPIRAL
POTENTIAL DENSITY SURFACE
BOUSSINESQ APPROXIMATION
North Atlantic
Online Access:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA480545
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA480545
Description
Summary:A simple method to invert the absolute geostrophic velocity on potential-density surfaces is developed based on McDougall's (1988) conservation statements on potential-density surfaces and Chu's (1995) and McDougall's (1995) P-vector concept. This method has a capability to handle a system with diapycnal velocities and non-coincidence of potential-density and neutral surfaces. The validity of the inversion is the existence of the P-vector spirals instead of the existence of the velocity spirals (usually called the Beta-spirals). We use a climatological T, S dataset for the Atlantic Ocean from the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) to show the benefit of using P-vector spirals in inverting the velocity field. Published in Journal of Oceanography, v56, p591-599, 2000.

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