oce (version 0.1-76)

sw.N2: Squared buoyancy frequency for seawater

Description

Compute $N^2$, the square of the buoyancy frequency for a seawater profile.

Usage

sw.N2(p, sigma.theta=NULL, ...)

Arguments

p

either pressure [dbar] (in which case sigma.theta must be provided) or an object of class ctd object (in which case sigma.theta is inferred from the object.

sigma.theta

Surface-referenced potential density minus 1000 [kg/m$^3$]

...

optional extra arguments to be passed to smooth.spline. See Details.

Value

• Square of buoyancy frequency [$radian^2/s^2$].

Details

If the first argument is a ctd object, then sigma.theta is inferred from it.

The result is calculated from the derivative of a smoothing cubic spline fitted to the density profile using smooth.spline. Optional arguments in ...are passed to this routine, providing the user with a good degree of control over the smoothing technique. A common method is to set df, the degrees of freedom for the spline fit. (Note that if df is not provided as an argument, sw.N2 will set it to min(length(p)/5, 10) to provide a result similar to what one might calculate by smoothing the density profile manually.)

Examples

library(oce)
data(ctd)
# Illustrate effect of changing df
plot(sw.N2(ctd), ctd$data$pressure,
	ylim=rev(range(ctd$data$pressure)), xlab="N2",ylab="p", type='l')
lines(sw.N2(ctd, df=10), ctd$data$pressure, col="blue")
grid()