Some Thoughts on SSPs and What to Do About Them

SeaQueen · 12-17-05, 05:39 PM

Lately I've been thinking about the speed of sound in DW. As one who spends a lot of time staring at SSPs around the world, frequently, I find myself thinking, "that's not right," wondering if there was a better way to do it, or if there was a smarter way to accurately represent the behavior of sound speed in the sea.

CZ - there's always a surface duct too. In real life, that need not be the case.

Surface duct environments - the duct is FAR deeper than one would expect, or would be physical.

Bottom limited - isn't really bottom limited, but rather represents a shallow duct situation. In deeper bottom limited realms, this can look silly.

Frequently the speed of sound is also extrordinarily low. The problem is particularly bad in tropical or subtropical waters. The only SSPs that really represent a physical situation is the CZ environment or the bottom limited environment. I'm beginning to think that in all my scenarios, the best thing to do is to define the environment as a CZ, whether it's shallow or deep. The only problem I have with that, is that in the tropical and subtropical coastal waters where I like to create scenarios, the environment in real life is strongly bottom limited, so defining it as a CZ in the absence of a model that adjusts the sea surface temperature gradients by lattitude means that the relatively deep areas that would still be bottom limited would show a convergence zone.

Or maybe I'm just being nitpicky...

12-17-05, 05:39 PM	#1
SeaQueen Naval Royalty Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Washington, DC Posts: 1,185 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Some Thoughts on SSPs and What to Do About Them Lately I've been thinking about the speed of sound in DW. As one who spends a lot of time staring at SSPs around the world, frequently, I find myself thinking, "that's not right," wondering if there was a better way to do it, or if there was a smarter way to accurately represent the behavior of sound speed in the sea. CZ - there's always a surface duct too. In real life, that need not be the case. Surface duct environments - the duct is FAR deeper than one would expect, or would be physical. Bottom limited - isn't really bottom limited, but rather represents a shallow duct situation. In deeper bottom limited realms, this can look silly. Frequently the speed of sound is also extrordinarily low. The problem is particularly bad in tropical or subtropical waters. The only SSPs that really represent a physical situation is the CZ environment or the bottom limited environment. I'm beginning to think that in all my scenarios, the best thing to do is to define the environment as a CZ, whether it's shallow or deep. The only problem I have with that, is that in the tropical and subtropical coastal waters where I like to create scenarios, the environment in real life is strongly bottom limited, so defining it as a CZ in the absence of a model that adjusts the sea surface temperature gradients by lattitude means that the relatively deep areas that would still be bottom limited would show a convergence zone. Or maybe I'm just being nitpicky...