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

a <- sw.alpha(ctd, is.theta=FALSE)
a <- sw.alpha(S, t=NULL, p=NULL, is.theta=FALSE)

Arguments

ctd an object of class "ctd".
S salinity [PSU]
t in-situ temperature [degC]
is.theta Set TRUE if t is theta or FALSE if t is in-situ

Details

In the first form, the argument is a ctd object, from which the salinity, temperature and pressure values are extracted and used to for the calculation. Note the use of potential temperature, not temperature.

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 0.1.74 Index]