theta: Potential temperature of seawater

Description

Computes theta, the potential temperature of seawater given original temperature, salinity, pressure, and reference pressure

Usage

theta(S=35, T=25, P=0, Pref=0)

Arguments

Salinity on the practical salinity scale, default is 35

Temperature in degrees Celsius, default is 25oC

Hydrostatic pressure in bar (surface = 0; 1000 db = 100 bar), default is 0

Pref

Reference hydrostatic pressure in bar, default is 0

Value

thetapotential temperature of seawater (C)

encoding

latin1

Details

Computes the potential temperature of seawater relative to a chosen reference pressure following Fofonoff and Millard (1983). The potential temperature $\theta$ is the temperature that a water parcel would have if were moved adiabatically to another pressure level Pref. Typically, the potential temperature is referenced to the surface ($Pref=0$). The potential teperature depends on the original salinity S, in-situ temperature T and pressure P.

This routine is essentially a wrapper for the swTheta routine of the 'oce' package. Unlike the latter, pressure units here are given in bars and method="unesco" is prescribed.

References

Fofonoff, P. and R. C. Millard Jr, 1983. Algorithms for computation of fundamental properties of seawater. Unesco Technical Papers in Marine Science, 44, 53 pp.

Examples

Run this code

#Calculate the potential temperature for a sample at 1000 db referenced to the surface
   theta <- theta(S=35, T=25, P=100, Pref=0)

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