CMCC Seminar
CMCC Headquarters in Lecce (Conference room, ground floor)
May 3, h. 11:00 AM CEST
Title: Linking ocean mixing and overturning circulation
Speaker Hans Burchard, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Rostock, Germany
Abstract
Estuaries are coastal water bodies connecting rivers to the ocean by mixing riverine freshwater with saline ocean water such that brackish water is generated with salinity continuously decreasing from ocean to river. To provide the upper parts of the estuaries with salt from the ocean, a landward salt transport across the surfaces of constant salinity against the river flow is required, the so-called estuarine circulation. In this presentation, quantitative relations between mixing and overturning circulation will first be shown for such estuaries, because of their relatively simple functionning, as shown above. It will then be attempted to generalise these estuarine relations based on an isohaline framework to a diapycnal framework that would apply to larger ocean basins where also temperature as an active tracer plays a important role.