Diapycnal mixing in the ocean: the Osborn-Cox model

Abstract

The Osborn-Cox model is a simplified tracer variance budget that is a basis for direct estimates of the diapycnal diffusivity KV. When used to interpret temperature variance dissipation measurements, it indicates KV to be much smaller in the thermocline than the diffusivities found by matching large-scale observations to models or budgets. It is argued that, if the Osborn-Cox model is to describe fluxes in the general circulation, it must describe the variance budget of all fluctuations around the long-term average used to define the general circulation. Within this framework, the simplifications leading to the Osborn-Cox model are reexamined to find if they still hold and which is most likely to cause KV errors. -from Author