gsw_geo_strf_dyn_height function

Geostrophic Dynamic Height Anomaly

This calculates a geopotential anomaly, called either the dynamic height anomaly or the geostrophic streamfunction in the TEOS-10 document listed as [1] below; users should read that and the references therein for more details on the definition and its calculation here.

To get the column-integrated value in meters, take the first value of the returned vector and divide by 9.7963$m/s^2$. Note that this yields an integral with the top measured pressure (not zero) as an upper limit.

gsw_geo_strf_dyn_height(SA, CT, p, p_ref = 0)

Arguments

• SA: Absolute Salinity [ g/kg ]. The valid range for most gsw functions is 0 to 42 g/kg.
• CT: Conservative Temperature [ degC ].
• p: sea pressure [dbar], i.e. absolute pressure [dbar] minus 10.1325 dbar
• p_ref: reference pressure [dbar], i.e. absolute pressure [dbar] minus 10.1325 dbar

Returns

A vector containing geopotential anomaly in $m^2/s^2$ for each level. For more on the units, see [2].

Details

Because of the scheme used in the underlying C code, the pressures must be in order, and must not have any repeats. Also, there must be at least 4 pressure values. Violating any of these three restrictions yields an error.

If p_ref exceeds the largest p value, a vector of zeros is returned, in accordance with the underlying C code.

Note the alteration of the test-value tolerance from a much smaller default. This is required because the test values derive from the GSW-Matlab code, which uses a different interpolation scheme than the GSW-C code, upon which GSW-R relies. See References 2 and 3 for more on this topic.

Implementation Note

This R function uses a wrapper to a C function contained within the GSW-C system as updated 2022-10-11 at https://github.com/TEOS-10/GSW-C with git commit 657216dd4f5ea079b5f0e021a4163e2d26893371.

The C function uses data from the library/gsw_data_v3_0.mat

file provided in the GSW-Matlab source code, version 3.06-11. Unfortunately, this version of the mat file is no longer displayed on the TEOS-10.org website. Therefore, in the interests of making GSW-R be self-contained, a copy was downloaded from http://www.teos-10.org/software/gsw_matlab_v3_06_11.zip on 2022-05-25, the .mat file was stored in the developer/create_data directory of https://github.com/TEOS-10/GSW-R, and then the dataset used in GSW-R was created based on that .mat file.

Please consult http://www.teos-10.org to learn more about the various TEOS-10 software systems.

Examples

SA <- c(34.7118, 34.8915, 35.0256, 34.8472, 34.7366, 34.7324)
CT <- c(28.8099, 28.4392, 22.7862, 10.2262,  6.8272,  4.3236)
p <- c(      10,      50,     125,     250,     600,    1000)
p_ref <- 500
dh <- gsw_geo_strf_dyn_height(SA, CT, p, p_ref)
# NOTE: see Details for the reason for the coarse tolerance.
stopifnot(all.equal(dh,
    c(12.172172845782585, 9.797739925848624, 6.070940749148281,
      3.042891445395256, -1.078872239804912, -4.656953829254061),
    tolerance=0.02))

References

1. http://www.teos-10.org/pubs/gsw/html/gsw_geo_strf_dyn_height.html

2. https://github.com/TEOS-10/GSW-R/issues/47

3. Barker, Paul M., and Trevor J. McDougall. "Two Interpolation Methods Using Multiply-Rotated Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolating Polynomials." Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 37, no. 4 (April 2020): 605–19.