Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Structure and résumé
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Heat, buoyancy, instability and turbulence
- 2 Neutral stability: internal waves
- 3 Instability and transition to turbulence in stratified shear flows
- 4 Convective instabilities
- 5 Instability and breaking of internal waves in mid-water
- 6 The measurement of turbulence and mixing
- 7 Fine-structure, transient-structures, and turbulence in the pycnocline
- 8 The benthic boundary layer
- 9 The upper ocean boundary layer
- 10 Shallow seas
- 11 Boundary layers on beaches and submarine slopes
- 12 Topographically related turbulence
- 13 Large-scale waves, eddies and dispersion
- 14 Epilogue
- Appendices
- References
- Index of laboratory experiments
- Subject index
- Plate section
1 - Heat, buoyancy, instability and turbulence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Structure and résumé
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Heat, buoyancy, instability and turbulence
- 2 Neutral stability: internal waves
- 3 Instability and transition to turbulence in stratified shear flows
- 4 Convective instabilities
- 5 Instability and breaking of internal waves in mid-water
- 6 The measurement of turbulence and mixing
- 7 Fine-structure, transient-structures, and turbulence in the pycnocline
- 8 The benthic boundary layer
- 9 The upper ocean boundary layer
- 10 Shallow seas
- 11 Boundary layers on beaches and submarine slopes
- 12 Topographically related turbulence
- 13 Large-scale waves, eddies and dispersion
- 14 Epilogue
- Appendices
- References
- Index of laboratory experiments
- Subject index
- Plate section
Summary
Introduction
The fluids, air and water, of the atmosphere and ocean that cover the solid surface of the Earth, are almost everywhere in a state referred to as ‘turbulent’. At its simplest level, turbulence involves the sort of eddying motions visible in clouds and smoke plumes, and that are felt in the gustiness of the wind or are seen in the movement of patches of foam on the surface of the sea. Some of the manifestations of turbulence in the ocean are illustrated in figures in this and subsequent chapters. Turbulence is very effective in the transfer of momentum and heat in the ocean. It disperses, stresses and strains the particles and living organisms within the ocean, and it stirs, spreads and dilutes the chemicals that are dissolved in the seawater or released into the ocean from natural and anthropogenic sources.
Knowledge of ocean turbulence and its effects is crucial in understanding how the ocean works and in the construction of models to predict how the ocean will change or how its interactions with the atmosphere will be altered in the future. Although estimates of the rate of dissipation of the energy of the tides through turbulence in shallow seas were made as early as 1919, direct observations of turbulence in the ocean date back only to the measurements of near-bed turbulent stress made in the 1950s and to studies of the spectra of small-scale motions in the upper ocean in the early 1960s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Turbulent Ocean , pp. 1 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005