Posted by Bruce Howe on November 07, 2000 at 09:54:58:
The acoustic and altimetric results are combined here in a
simple way that facilitates the interpretation - a "back of
the envelope" two-layer inversion. The results (with this
simple model) show that the flow in the Kuroshio extension
region can be explained by 1 degree of freedom in the
vertical, while in the recirculation gyre two degrees of
freedom are required with barotropic flow playing an important
role. With the simple model it is clear that horizontal
advection must play a role in the recirculation gyre in order
to balance the heat budget.
While the "comparison between tomographic derived temperature
anomaly is good for T3-T4 Kuroshio Extension front region…" it
will be the more subtle differences that will be important
when trying to understand cross-frontal fluxes and higher
order dynamics and thermodynamics.
Evidence of change in the vertical temperature structure over
time can be seen in the low-frequency sum travel time plots -
for instance in d (T3-T4), the various ray travel times spread
between day 230 and 240.
It will be very interesting when a complete inversion of all
the data is performed, that includes all the data, a more
sohisticated ocean parameterization/modeling, and error
estimates.
The acoustic data looks very clean. In the dot plot of raw
travel times, b, there appear to be somewhat intermittent ray
arrivels (452.5 s for example). Are they surface bounce rays
that come and go?