The fine-structure contamination of vertical velocity spectra in the deep ocean

Abstract

When determining vertical velocity spectra from temperature time series and the mean vertical temperature gradient, restrictions may arise friom the existence of fine-structre. Phillips (1971) and Garrett and Munk (1971_ have shown that the fine-structure contamination of internal gravity wave spectra can be written as a function of some statistical properties of the internal wave field and the vertical wave number spectrum of the fine-structure. A consistent set of current and temperature data was obtained during an experiment at Site D to study this problem. The wave number spectrum of the vertical temperature fine-structure and the apparent frequently spectrum of internal waves are determined from these data. In contrast to the asasumptions in the above models, our fine-structure data imply a wave number spectrum proportional to (wave number) −3 in the range which is important here. Using the above set of data, a model is suggested to describe the effect of fine-structure on vertical velocity spectra computed with the mean vertical temperature gradient. It indicates a maximum fine-structure contamination of the true frequency spectrum of internal gravity waves in the middle of the internal wave band, with less contamination at low and high frequencies.