Abstract
One of the most important but least understood regions of oceans and lakes is the near-surface zone. Exchanges of energy and momentum between the atmosphere and the waters below are controlled by turbulent mixing processes in the surface zone. Major advances in understanding these processes have been hampered by a lack of observations of turbulence near the surface. We have recently constructed a probe which can be used to estimate an important variable in theories of turbulence, the rate at which the kinetic energy of turbulence is dissipated, and have found a surprising though simple result: to a first approximation, scaling laws devised to describe dissipation in the atmospheric boundary layer may also be applicable in the water near the surface.
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Dillon, T., Richman, J., Hansen, C. et al. Near-surface turbulence measurements in a lake. Nature 290, 390–392 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1038/290390a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/290390a0
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