2004 LOM Workshop

Tuesday 2:40 - 3:00 p.m.

A new model of buoyant plumes

VMCanuto, MSDubovikov and NLTausnev
NASA,- Columbia University, NY, NY
vcanuto@giss.nasa.gov

ABSTRACT

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Buoyant Plumes play a key role in describing Deep Convection in the ocean. The canonical plume model of Taylor and Turner (TTM) cannot however be directly used since it was developed for a solitary plume whose cross section is much less than that of the environment. In the ocean case, stable stratification slows down the vertical plume velocity and since entrainment causes the mass flux to increase, the plume cross section increases toward unity thus making the TTM model inapplicable. A new plume model, free of this limitation, has been developed and tested against Deep Convectiion data of Schott et al.(1996). The theoretical basis of the model and the model predictions will be discussed.

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LOM Users' Workshop, February 9-11, 2004