| A second-order turbulence closure model, similar to Mellor and Yamada's (1974) level-3 model, is implemented. This is used to investigate the role of the different turbulent processes and the resulting dynamical and thermal structures, for oceanic upper layers subjected to a variety of unsteady atmospheric forcings. From the distributions obtained for current and temperature, turbulence levels, the production, transfer and dissipation terms in the turbulent kinetic energy and temperature variance budgets, the physics of the oceanic mixed layer and thermocline can be discussed and comparisons made with the models of Mellor and Durbin (1975), Warn-Varnas and Piacsek (1979) and Kundu (1980) and some experimental data. Most often, shear production and viscous... |
