The 13th Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence

7.3
MULTIFRACTAL ANALYSIS OF THE SOUTHWESTERN ICELAND SEA SURFACE MIXED LAYER THERMAL STRUCTURE

Peter C. Chu, NPS, Monterey, CA

The nonlinear features of ocean mixed layer is investigated by the multifractal analysis on a thermistor chain data set collected in the Norwegian Current system in October 1989. The data set provides a two-dimensional temperature field from the surface to 250 m depth with 2 m resolution in vertical and 1.85 m resolution in horizontal, and shows high levels of variability excited over a large range of scales by the combined actions of external forcing and internal instability. The stationarity and intermittency are also discussed

The 13th Symposium on Boundary Layers and Turbulence