Observations of sea surface temperature and wave height were made from a large, manned spar buoy (R/P FLIP) ~100 km off the coast of Baja California. Surface temperature was measured with a radiation thermometer which viewed a disc on the surface 12 cm in diameter. The instrument responded to frequencies...
A strong, isolated October storm generated 0.35–0.7 m s⁻¹ inertial frequency currents in the 40-m deep mixed layer of a 300 km×300 km region of the northeast Pacific Ocean. The authors describe the evolution of these currents and the background flow in which they evolve for nearly a month following...
A new method is presented for estimating the vertical turbulent heat flux at the bottom of the daily mixed layer from the temperature data in the mixed layer and net solar irradiance data at the sea surface. We assume that fluctuations in the divergence of advective heat flux have longer...
Current meter data from two sites were analyzed for near-inertial motions generated by storm during the ten-month period of the Ocean Storms Experiment in the northeast Pacific Ocean. The most striking feature of the inertial wave response to storms was the almost instantaneous generation of waves in the mixed layer,...
Observations were made of downward solar radiation as a function of depth during an experiment in the North Pacific (35°N, 155°W). The irradiance meter employed was sensitive to solar radiation of wavelength 400–1000 nm arriving from above at a horizontal surface. Because of selective absorption of the short and long...
Leads act as windows through which solar radiation enters the upper ocean. Studies of the heat budget and ice melt require accurate parameterization of the albedo. Results from summertime measurements of albedo over leads show that under cloudy conditions the average albedo is 0.066 with a standard deviation of 0.007....
A thermistor chain was moored below the pack ice from 50–150 m in the Arctic Ocean for five days in 1981. Oscillations in temperature are attributed to the vertical dispalcement of internal waves. The spectral shape of isotherm dispalcement is consistent with the Garrett-Munk model and other internal wave observations,...
Twelve days of microstructure measurements at the equator (140°W) in November 1984 showed a
surprisingly strong effect of both the daily cycle of solar heating and wind on mixing in the upper ocean.
Because of limited variations in atmospheric forcing and currents during the experiment, processes in the
daily mixing...
A melt pond model is presented that predicts pond size and depth changes, given an
initial ice thickness field and representative surface fluxes. The model is based on the
assumption that as sea ice melts, fresh water builds up in the ice pore space and eventually
saturates the ice. Under...
The effects of ice keels on the upper ocean are examined using a combination of
turbulence measurements and output from a large-eddy simulation (LES) model. Two
cases are examined, one during the winter when the under-ice boundary layer is relatively
deep (~20 m) and near the freezing point and a...