sw.depth {oce}R Documentation

Water depth

Description

Compute depth from pressure and latitude.

Usage

sw.depth(p, lat=45, degrees=TRUE)

Arguments

p either pressure [dbar], in which case lat must also be given, or a ctd object, in which case lat will be inferred from the object.
lat Latitude in degN or radians north of the equator.
degrees Flag indicating whether degrees are used for latitude; if set to FALSE, radians are used.

Details

If the first argument is a ctd object, then the pressure and latitude are extracted from it, and used to for the calculation.

The information given below is adapted from the fortran code at http://sam.ucsd.edu/sio210/propseawater/ppsw_fortran/ppsw.f, on which this R code was based.

Depth in meters from pressure in decibars using Saunders and Fofonoff's method, with the formula refitted for 1980 equation of state

Check value: depth = 9712.653 m for p=10000 decibars, latitude=30 deg above for standard ocean: t=0 deg. celsuis ; s=35 (ipss-78)

Value

Depth below the ocean surface, in metres.

Author(s)

Dan Kelley

References

(authors?), 1976, (title?), Deep-Sea Res., 23, 109-111.

Examples

d <- sw.depth(10, 45);

[Package oce version 0.1-76 Index]