Nama : AIDIL FITARSYAH NIM : 1111101010103

52

INTRODUCTORY DYNAMICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

which this term had before it was assumed that v is essentially uniform as shown later in Section 9.3), and p v(u/x) is the stress (force/unit area) in the xdirection due to molecular effects and a gradient of in the x-direction. We can\ therefore identify pu'u' as a stress due to the turbulence. It is the derivatives of these stresses which produce net forces on a small volume of fluid (just as does the derivative of the pressure as shown in Section 6.31). The stress mechanisms are qualitatively similarthe molecular effect is produced by molecules bouncing back and forth and exchanging momentum, the turbulent stress is produced by "chunks" of fluid moving back and forth and exchanging momentum with the surrounding fluid. The latter is more effective because the distance moved and the mass involved are much larger. Stresses such as p u'u\ pu'v\ pu'W (and other averaged quadratic products of w', ' and w') are termed Reynolds stresses, again after Osborne Reynolds who first derived them. By analogy with the molecular case we might suppose that these stresses are related to the mean velocity gradients by some sort of "viscosity" (an eddy or turbulent viscosity) as, for example,

; ;

; =

Unlike the molecular case we use different values of eddy viscosity (Ax, etc.) for different directions, since they may be different (particularly between the vertical and horizontal directions because of static stability). The above is the simplest way to define eddy viscosity. However, this definition does not preserve the symmetry of the Reynolds stresses e.g. v'u' = (/) is not necessarily the same as u'v' = Ay(d/y) although it should be. Usually either / or d/dy will dominate and one can pick fromthe flow which is appropriate. It is possible to get round this problem but equation (7.4) (and (7.5) following) are sufficient for our purposes and we shall leave further discussion of this point for more advanced texts. Then a term such as d(u'u')/dx becomes \_(/)]/. It is quite common to take Ax outside the derivative, either based on the argument (again in analogy with molecular viscosity) that terms such as (/)(/) are less important, or that the analogy is crude (which it is) and this further assumption is no worse than the initial one (which may or may not be true, depending on the case). With this final neglect of space variations of the A's relative to the other terms, the turbulent friction terms become, in the x-direction,

where the v4's are called "eddy" viscosities. Note that they are, like v, kinematic (dimensions [L2T~1] with units m2 s~ *) and the terms in expression (7.5) have dimensions of force/unit mass, i.e. acceleration. One must multiply the A'sby p to get dynamic viscosity which, when multiplied by d2/dx2, gives a force acting on unit volume. In the CGS system of units, when p ~ 1 gem"3, the dynamic and kinematic viscosities have about the same numerical value but in SI with p ~ 1000 k g m - 3 they do not. (In the literature the symbol A (or other symbol for viscosity) has sometimes been used for kinematic and sometimes for dynamic viscosity, so some care is required when extracting numerical values. In this book, kinematic viscosity will be used throughout.) Unlike coefficients of

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molecular viscosity, the eddy-viscosity coefficients are not constant for a particular fluid and temperature, salinity and pressure but vary with the particular motion involved. They are not properties of the fluid but of the flow ! Values are up to 1011 times those for kinematic molecular viscosity. Many attempts have been made to express Ax, etc., in terms of the mean velocities and their derivatives but no generally applicable results have been obtained. We must therefore remember that the eddy viscosity terms in the above form are just an interim measure to represent one of the effects of turbulence until we understand this feature of fluid motion well enough to represent it more exactly. The eddy viscosity approach does give good results in some cases, e.g. in the atmospheric surface layer, the first few tens of metres above the earth's surface. In this layer, Az varies linearly with z and the solution of the equations (which are the same as for the ocean) using the eddy-viscosity form for the friction term agrees very well with observations. Presumably the flow near the ocean bottom could be treated in the same way but observations of the flow in this part of the ocean are quite limited. When we introduce the eddy viscosity (including the molecular viscosity in it), the equations of motion for the x- and ^-components are

where u, V, W, a and p are average quantities the overbar having been omitted for simplicity. (Unless otherwise stated we assume that we are discussing the mean motion equations from now on.) INTRODUCTORY DYNAMICAL OCEANOGRAPHY 7.3 Scaling the equations of motion; Rossby number, Ekman number The equations of motion in the form of equations (7.6) and the corresponding zcomponent equation (given shortly) are complicated and non-linear (although usually only weakly) and are generally not solvable explicitly. Before giving up in mathematical despair, let us examine the various terms to make rough estimates of their sizesit may be possible initially to neglect some of them but still leave equations which refer to physical reality in the ocean and describe actual motions, even if only approximately. Later, we can reintroduce some of the neglected terms and obtain more efcact mathematical descriptions of the motion. What we will do is refer to the data bank of descriptive oceanography to find out what may be the sizes of the various terms so that we can decide which are the most important in particular situations. First let us consider the main body of the oceans away from strong currents (such as the Gulf Stream or Kuroshio) and away from the sea surface where the frictional influence of the wind is important. We can return to these regions later. The Pacific Ocean is roughly 12 000 km across and the Atlantic 6000 km, so let us take a horizontal length scale (L) of 1000 km = 106 m as typical of largescale features of the ocean circulation. Typical horizontal speeds (U) are of the order of 0.1ms"1. We will take a

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vertical scale length (H) of 103 m, a reasonable fraction of the total depth (world ocean average depth ^ 4000 m). First we will estimate a typical vertical speed ( W) using the equation of continuity .

( for which the order of magnitude of the terms is

For a typical time scale (T) we take 10 days ^ 106 s, considering shorter periods to be turbulent components for the moment. For the Coriolis acceleration, at latitude = 45 then 2 sin 45 = 2 cos 45 =* 2 x 7.3 x 10"5 x0.71 ~ 10"4s_1, while #^10ms"2 . For the pressure term, a ~ 10"3 m3 kg"* and p 104 kPa = 107 Pa for z = -103 m from the hydrostaticequation. Values estimated for Ax and Ay vary from 10 to 105 m2 s"l and we will use 105 m2 s" *. For A2 estimates range from 10"5 to 10"1 m2 s"l and we will use 10" * m2 s~ *. By using maximum values for Ax, Ay and Az we should get upper limits for the sizes of the friction terms. We see that these estimates for eddy viscosity values vary widely. Part of this. THE ROLE OF THE NON-LINEAR TERMS variation is due to the fact that they are properties of the flow, not of the fluid, and part is due to the way in which they are obtained. For example, by measuring or estimating the other important terms in the equations one may obtain the friction terms by difference and then calculate the eddy viscosity from Ax = friction/(32u/x2). Alternatively, one may adjust the eddy viscosities in a solution (either analytical or numerical) to make it fit the observations as well as possible. A simple rough approach (probably good within a factor of 100) is to use the fact that the non-linear terms are about the same size as the turbulent friction terms which we pointed out in the previous section. Then

or
Xthus with H/L ~ 10"3, Az ~ 10"6 Ax as for the estimates given. The fact that Az <^ Ax or Ay is partly due to the static stability caused by stratification which both inhibits vertical turbulent transfers and helps to make the flow nearly horizontal. The facts that H/L ~ 10" 3, that the forcing has large horizontal scales and that the rotational effects (the Coriolis terms) are important enter too. Note that Ax ~ UL is equivalent to saying that a Reynolds Number based on eddy viscosity is of order 1. Using [/ = 0.1ms_1 and L = 106 m gives Ax and Ay ~ 105 m2 s~ \ at the upper end of the range of estimated values. Lower values may occur because the flows on which they are based are of smaller scale (smaller L or U) or have an eddy viscosity Reynolds Number > 1.

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The vertical component equation of motion corresponding to equations

In this equation, all the terms are very much smaller than the pressure term and g and so we can ignore all except these two and will be left with the hydrostatic equation (derived in Appendix 1), i.e. INTRODUCTORY DYNAMICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

correct to about 1 part in 106, even when the water is moving with typical ocean speeds and even though we have chosen values for the eddy viscosities at the high end of their observed range for the open ocean. (It is left as an exercise for the reader to show that the hydrostatic equation still applies even in faster currents such as the Gulf Stream where the maximum speed is about 3 m s 1 and the stream width is ~ 100 km). Note that the non-linear terms are all of the same size as a result of our estimating the vertical speed W from the horizontal speeds using the equation of continuity. Also the friction terms are all of the same (small) size as a result of our choice of the H,L,AX and Az values. This result will hold also for the other component equations and therefore when examining them we will need to look at only one non-linear and one friction term to estimate their sizes. Looking now at one of the horizontal component equations .

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The pressure term has been represented by a query here because we do not have direct measurements oidp/dx. We see, however, that it must be of the same size as the Coriolis term (fv) in order to balance the equation. Of the remaining terms the local acceleration term du/dt is the largest but even it is only about 1 % of the Coriolis term for typical times of the order of 10 days and will be smaller for longer times. The second Coriolis term (2Qcos w) is small because of the typically small values of w. The non-linear terms for the mean motion are negligibly small and so are the friction terms in the interior of the water mass. Therefore, to an order of accuracy of 1 % we have .

THE ROLE OF THE NON-LINEAR TERMS These equations describe the relationships between the horizontal pressure distributions and the horizontal velocity components in the ocean, and the distribution of pressure as a function of depth and density distribution (a = 1/p) which is a function of the distribution of salinity, temperature and pressure. In principle, if we observe the distribution of salinity and temperature as a function of depth in the ocean we can calculate p from the z equation (7.9) and use it to find u and v from the x and y equations. Alternatively, for theoretical studies we could regard the temperature and salinity distributions as unknowns, introduce the equation of state a = a(s, i, p) (from laboratory studies of the properties of sea water as described previously) and the heat- and salt-conservation equations, and solve the set of simultaneous equations (seven in all), an approach which we shall discuss in Chapter 10. If we take d/dy of the first of equations (7.9) and d/dx of the second equation and add them we get .

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For ^ 45, sin ~ cos and then W = UH/R and taking H to be the total depth, W~10-3U. For = 5 and H = 5000m, this scaling gives W ^ 10~2(/. Thus flows for which the Coriolis terms are large are essentially horizontal ( 7 W < U) even if the horizontal scale is much smaller than the L = 1000 km which we chose earlier. It appears, therefore, that the interior region of the ocean is described by a simple set of equations which can be solved, because non-linear effects are negligible. However, these simple equations do not give us a complete description because the boundary conditions for the interior of the ocean depend on the surface layers where wind friction acts, and on the lateral boundary layers (e.g. the Gulf Stream) where the dynamics are more complicated. A complete solution for the interior requires solutions for the outer regions, so that the problem is not fully solved. We can, however, ignore the boundary-condition problem for a while and make use of the simple equations to find out quite a lot about the motion in the interior.