sw.alpha.over.beta {oce}R Documentation

Ratio of seawater thermal expansion coefficient to haline contraction coefficient

Description

Compute alpha/beta using McDougall's (1987) algorithm.

Usage

ab <- sw.alpha.over.beta(ctd, is.theta=FALSE);
ab <- sw.alpha.over.beta(S, t=NULL, p=NULL, is.theta=FALSE);

Arguments

ctd an object of class "ctd".
S salinity [PSU]
t in-situ temperature [degC]
p pressure [dbar]
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 psu/degC.

Author(s)

Dan Kelley

References

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

Examples

 # 0.3476 (from p1964 of McDougall 1987)
 ab <- sw.alpha.over.beta(40, 10, 4000, is.theta=TRUE) 

[Package oce version 0.1.74 Index]