P-Vector Spirals and Determination of Absolute Velocities

• 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

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.