Skip to contents

Seawater Density

Source: R/sw.R
swRho.Rd

Compute \(\rho\), the in-situ density of seawater.

Usage

swRho(
  salinity,
  temperature = NULL,
  pressure = NULL,
  longitude = NULL,
  latitude = NULL,
  eos = getOption("oceEOS", default = "gsw"),
  debug = getOption("oceDebug")
)

Arguments

salinity

either practical salinity (in which case temperature and pressure must be provided) or an oce object, in which case salinity, temperature (in the ITS-90 scale; see next item), etc. are inferred from the object, ignoring the other parameters, if they are supplied.

temperature

in-situ temperature (\(^\circ\)C), defined on the ITS-90 scale. This scale is used by GSW-style calculation (as requested by setting eos="gsw"), and is the value contained within ctd objects (and probably most other objects created with data acquired in the past decade or two). Since the UNESCO-style calculation is based on IPTS-68, the temperature is converted within the present function, using T68fromT90().

pressure

pressure (dbar)

longitude

longitude of observation (only used if eos="gsw"; see “Details”).

latitude

latitude of observation (only used if eos="gsw"; see “Details”).

eos

equation of state, either "unesco" (references 1 and 2) or "gsw" (references 3 and 4).

debug

an integer specifying whether debugging information is to be printed during the processing. This is a general parameter that is used by many oce functions. Generally, setting debug=0 turns off the printing, while higher values suggest that more information be printed. If one function calls another, it usually reduces the value of debug first, so that a user can often obtain deeper debugging by specifying higher debug values.

Value

In-situ density (kg/m\(^3\)).

Details

If eos="unesco", the density is calculated using the UNESCO equation of state for seawater (references 1 and 2), and if eos="gsw", the GSW formulation (references 3 and 4) is used.

Temperature units

The UNESCO formulae are defined in terms of temperature measured on the IPTS-68 scale, whereas the replacement GSW formulae are based on the ITS-90 scale. Prior to the addition of GSW capabilities, the various sw* functions took temperature to be in IPTS-68 units. As GSW capabilities were added in early 2015, the assumed unit of temperature was taken to be ITS-90. This change means that old code has to be modified, by replacing e.g. swRho(S, T, p) with swRho(S, T90fromT68(T), p). At typical oceanic values, the difference between the two scales is a few millidegrees.

References

  1. Fofonoff, P. and R. C. Millard Jr, 1983. Algorithms for computation of fundamental properties of seawater. Unesco Technical Papers in Marine Science, 44, 53 pp.

  2. Gill, A.E., 1982. Atmosphere-ocean Dynamics, Academic Press, New York, 662 pp.

  3. IOC, SCOR, and IAPSO (2010). The international thermodynamic equation of seawater-2010: Calculation and use of thermodynamic properties. Technical Report 56, Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, Manuals and Guide.

  4. McDougall, T.J. and P.M. Barker, 2011: Getting started with TEOS-10 and the Gibbs Seawater (GSW) Oceanographic Toolbox, 28pp., SCOR/IAPSO WG127, ISBN 978-0-646-55621-5.

See also

Related density routines include swSigma0() (and equivalents at other pressure horizons), swSigmaT(), and swSigmaTheta().

Other functions that calculate seawater properties: T68fromT90(), T90fromT48(), T90fromT68(), computableWaterProperties(), locationForGsw(), swAbsoluteSalinity(), swAlpha(), swAlphaOverBeta(), swBeta(), swCSTp(), swConservativeTemperature(), swDepth(), swDynamicHeight(), swLapseRate(), swN2(), swPressure(), swRrho(), swSCTp(), swSR(), swSTrho(), swSigma(), swSigma0(), swSigma1(), swSigma2(), swSigma3(), swSigma4(), swSigmaT(), swSigmaTheta(), swSoundAbsorption(), swSoundSpeed(), swSpecificHeat(), swSpice(), swSpiciness0(), swSpiciness1(), swSpiciness2(), swSstar(), swTFreeze(), swTSrho(), swThermalConductivity(), swTheta(), swViscosity(), swZ()

Author

Dan Kelley

Examples

library(oce)
# The numbers in the comments are the check values listed in reference 1;
# note that temperature in that reference was on the T68 scale, but that
# the present function works with the ITS-90 scale, so a conversion
# is required.
swRho(35, T90fromT68(5), 0, eos = "unesco") # 1027.67547
#> [1] 1027.675
swRho(35, T90fromT68(5), 10000, eos = "unesco") # 1069.48914
#> [1] 1069.489
swRho(35, T90fromT68(25), 0, eos = "unesco") # 1023.34306
#> [1] 1023.343
swRho(35, T90fromT68(25), 10000, eos = "unesco") # 1062.53817
#> [1] 1062.538