Part

Fundamental Laws

The fundaments of ocean physics are based on the concepts of hydrodynamics and
thermodynamics. Molecular structures of the media are not considered explicitly
(except in radiation processes which, however, are not treated in this book). Physical
properties of small but finite volume elements are defined according to the continuum
hypothesis, e. g. a mean velocity or a mean concentration of constituents are defined
locally at each point of the fluid domain. Such mean values are well defined because
a volume of only 1 m3 of sea water or air contains more than 1010 molecules. The
average separation  between molecules is much smaller than any relevant scale L
over which variations of variables are considered. In water  is only about 108 cm,
whereas the smallest scale in microstructure measurements in the ocean is typically
a few millimeters. With very good accuracy. the corresponding state variables can
thus be regarded as continuous fields in space and time.
The equations, which describe the evolution of the state of the ocean, are the
macroscopic conservation theorems for partial masses, momentum, and internal energy, as used in conventional hydrodynamics and thermodynamics. These macroscopic theorems can in principle be derived from a statistical theory in which the
basic physical laws, governing the microscopic state of single molecules, are embedded (see textbooks on statistical mechanics as e. g. Huang, 1987). The molecular
structure of the fluid also determines the values of important parameters appearing
in these equations, such as molecular diffusivities for momentum and partial masses,
in terms of the forces acting between molecules.
In this part we follow instead a phenomenological derivation of hydrodynamics,
based on the empirical knowledge that mass, momentum and energy of small (material) volume elements moving in the fluid are conserved. The thermodynamics is
also formulated for such volume elements, assuming that the properties are locally
in a thermodynamical equilibrium. Thermodynamic and molecular properties then
have to be taken from empirical findings. The macroscopic theory is built in this Lagrangian point of view, but the evolution equations are transformed to the Eulerian
form of a field theory which is more useful in applications.

A fluid parcel (also called

fluid particle) is a small
volume element moving
with the local velocity, in
case of seawater this is the
barycentric velocity of the
pure water and the salt constituents. The fluid parcel
conserves its mass but may
exchange material by diffusive processes with the
surrounding fluid (pure water in/out and salt out/in).
The sketch shows the parcel
with a vectorial flux J of
a substance through a surface element dA with normal n. Further explanations
are given in Chapter 2.