- Heat and salt transport across the strait of Otranto
- Yari, Sadegh
Subject
- Adriatic Sea
- water
- heat and salt transport
- Strait of Otranto
- FLUIDODINAMICA AMBIENTALE (ENVIROMENTAL FLUID MECHANICS)
- ICAR/01 IDRAULICA
Description
- 2007/2008
- The water transport and advected heat through the Strait of Otranto are computed applying a new methodology to the historical data set. According to the previous oceanographic studies, the Adriatic Sea annually loses heat through the air-sea interface. This heat loss should be balanced by the heat advected across the Strait of Otranto. Direct current measurements for almost one year (from December 94 through November 95), and five seasonal oceanographic campaigns are used in this study. The current data are measured at sixteen locations at different depths; near surface, intermediate depths and near bottom. The measured current data are detided and low pass filtered in order to remove tidal and inertial oscillations. A variational inverse method based on a variational principle and a finite element solver is used to reconstruct the current field across the Strait section from sparse measurements. The mean water flow across the strait consists of an inflow on the eastern side and an outflow on the western side, while there is a two layer structure in the central part. The latter has an inflow in the surface layer and an outflow in the bottom layer. The mean monthly, seasonally and yearly water transports and corresponding errors are calculated. The mean annual inflow and outflow water transport rates are estimated as 0.90±0.04 Sv and -0.94±0.31 (error) Sv and the net transport is equal to -0.04±0.32 (error) Sv. Thus, on a yearly time interval, the inflow and the outflow are practically compensated. These estimations of water transport are in agreement with previous studies. The seasonal heat flux is estimated by using the data collected during the hydrographic surveys conducted in December 1994, February, May, August and November 1995. The results show a net heat advection into the Adriatic Sea on a yearly basis. The estimated values of advected heat applying two different methods are 2.93±0.35 TW and 2.5±0.35 TW, which are equivalent to heat gain of 21.3±2.5 (error) Wm-2 and 17±2.5 Wm-2 for the whole basin which are compared to the calculated heat loss of -36±152 (std) Wm-2 over the Adriatic Sea. Salt transported salt is calculated by using salinity and current data. The average annual salt transport is estimated as an inflow of salt equal to 0.05106 Kgs-1. This is in agreement with the fact that the Adriatic Sea is a dilution basin. The average annual fresh water budget is estimated as -0.002 Sv which is equivalent to fresh water gain of 0.45 m/year for the entire Adriatic Sea.
- XXI Ciclo
- 1972
Date
- 2009-06-01T08:18:59Z
- 2009-06-01T08:18:59Z
- 2009-04-28
Type
- Doctoral Thesis
Format
- application/pdf
Identifier
urn:nbn:it:units-7494