气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Spice Variables and Their Use in Physical Oceanography

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DOI	10.1029/2019JC015936
	Spice Variables and Their Use in Physical Oceanography
	McDougall T.J.; Barker P.M.; Stanley G.J.
发表日期	2021
ISSN	21699275
卷号	126 期号:2
英文摘要	There have been a variety of definitions of a “spice” type variable in physical oceanography. These variables have been used to measure water-mass variations and to examine how the stability ratio varies vertically on a water column. Some authors have chosen to derive such an oceanographic variable, called potential spicity, so that its isolines are orthogonal to isolines of potential density on a suitably scaled salinity-temperature diagram. Here it is shown that isopycnal differences of potential spicity are more than a factor of 100 different to the corresponding isopycnal differences of other measures of water-mass variations such as spiciness, whose isopycnal differences are proportional to the compensating contributions of salinity and temperature to potential density. This behavior of potential spicity is caused by the imposition of the orthogonal constraint which lacks a physical oceanographic motivation. Such orthogonal potential spicity variables also depend on the arbitrarily chosen scaling factor that relates the scales of the salinity and temperature axes on the salinity-temperature diagram. A preferred alternative to using either of these two spice variables is (1) to plot variations of Absolute Salinity in approximately neutral surfaces and (2) to calculate and plot the stability ratio on vertical water columns. The anomaly of Absolute Salinity is best made with respect to a reference relationship between Absolute Salinity and Conservative Temperature that is typical of vertical casts in the oceanographic region of interest. © 2021. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
英文关键词	ocean mixing; spiciness; spicity; water masses
语种	英语
来源期刊	Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/186500
作者单位	School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	McDougall T.J.,Barker P.M.,Stanley G.J.. Spice Variables and Their Use in Physical Oceanography[J],2021,126(2).
APA	McDougall T.J.,Barker P.M.,&Stanley G.J..(2021).Spice Variables and Their Use in Physical Oceanography.Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans,126(2).
MLA	McDougall T.J.,et al."Spice Variables and Their Use in Physical Oceanography".Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 126.2(2021).