Abstract
The oceans are massive moving reservoirs of heat, moisture and energy underlying a relatively diffuse atmosphere, whose entire extent contains two or three cm of water and perhaps the heat found in 5 m of ocean surface water. The pattern of energy flux involves a multiple communication between air and sea: of the net incoming solar at the top of the atmosphere some 73% is absorbed by the sea. The partition of that heating between internal and gravitational potential energy is depth dependent, but vastly favors internal energy (perhaps by a factor of 103). But in a perfect gas the ratio of potential to internal energy produced by heating is far different (~ (1-γ), where γ is the ratio of specific heats), such that fully 40% of the heat flowing back into the atmosphere is mechanically active. By gravitational/rotational adjustment this potential energy generates kinetic energy of the symmetric circulation, which breaks down further in baroclinic instability. The zonal winds, thus intensified, set up the oceanic gyres whose potential energy exceeds kinetic by a factor (L/Lρ)2 ~ 103, where L is the gyre-scale and Lρ the gravest Rossby radius of deformation. This not to belittle the direct production of potential energy in the oceans by buoyancy flux from the atmosphere.
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© 1986 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Rhines, P.B. (1986). Lectures on Ocean Circulation Dynamics. In: Willebrand, J., Anderson, D.L.T. (eds) Large-Scale Transport Processes in Oceans and Atmosphere. NATO ASI Series, vol 190. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4768-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4768-9_3
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