sw.alpha {oce}R Documentation

Seawater thermal expansion coefficient

Description

Compute alpha, the seawater thermal expansion coefficient, as the product of alpha/beta and beta, each calculated from McDougall's (1987) algorithm.

Usage

sw.alpha(S, t=NULL, p=NULL, is.theta=FALSE)

Arguments

S either salinity [PSU] (in which case t and p must be provided) or a ctd object (in which case S, t and p are determined from the object, and must not be provided in the argument list).
t in-situ temperature [degC]
p pressure [dbar]
is.theta Set TRUE if t is theta or FALSE if t is in-situ

Details

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

Value

Value in 1/degC.

Author(s)

Dan Kelley

References

McDougall, T.J. 1987. "Neutral Surfaces" Journal of Physical Oceanography vol 17 pages 1950-1964

Examples

 # 2.5060e-4 (inferred from p1964 of McDougall 1987)
 a <- sw.alpha(40, 10, 4000) 

[Package oce version 0.1-76 Index]