Field measurement of upper ocean turbulence dissipation associated with wave-turbulence interaction in the South China Sea

Abstract

The turbulence dissipation rate within the mixed layer was measured in the open ocean and the coastal water of the South China Sea under moderate winds of 4.7∼8.9ms-1 using a free-falling MSS profiler. In the open ocean, the profile of the dissipation rate within the mixed layer exhibited an exponential decay with the depth at most stations, which was satisfactorily consistent with that predicted by the parameterization of wave-turbulence interaction presented by Huang and Qiao (2010) while deviating from that by the law of the wall. In the coastal ocean, however, both the parameterization of wave-turbulence interaction and the law of the wall can give approximate predictions to the measured dissipation rate. Copyright 2012 by the American Geophysical Union.