sw.depth {oce}R Documentation

Water depth

Description

Compute depth from pressure and latitude.

Usage

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

Depth is calculated from pressure using Saunders and Fofonoff's method, with the formula refitted for 1980 UNESCO equation of state (UNESCO, 1983).

Check value: 9712.653 m for 10,000 dbar at 30 deg latitude.

Value

For sw.depth, depth below the ocean surface, in metres. For sw.z, the negative of the depth, i.e. the distance above the surface.

Author(s)

Dan Kelley

References

Unesco 1983. Algorithms for computation of fundamental properties of seawater, 1983. Unesco Tech. Pap. in Mar. Sci., No. 44, 53 pp.

Examples

d <- sw.depth(10, 45)

[Package oce version 0.1-80 Index]