Heat and Salt Budgets, and Quantifying Mixing

Reading

Why on the whole does the surface of the ocean receive less insolation than the land?
What are the terms in the heat equation?
What are their approximate relative magnitudes?
How do you estimate each?
Which terms are the most difficult to parameterize and what physics makes them difficult?
Try to understand the patterns to Q_h and Q_e in Figs 6.7 and 6.8.
Why is the heat flux markedly different between the N and S hemispheres?
If no latitude is to change temperature too drastically, what direction must heat flow according to figure 6.9c (average the two curves by eye to get an estimate of mean heat flux for the year)?

What is the difference between saying that salt in the ocean is conserved and saying that it is constant?
What units is salinity usually expressed in? What is the physical meaning of these units?
What factors change salinity?
How does the derivation of eqs 6.5 compare to the Knudsen Relation we looked at in the previous class?
What is the “residence time”?
From Fig 6.11, where is precipitation high?
From Fig 6.11, which ocean might you expect is the freshest?
Why is there an east/west asymmetry to E-P in the ocean basins?

For salt, we’ve already talked about advection (what comes in, must go out), and evaporation and precipitation (QS). What extra term can change the salinity at any given location?
How do we quantify the diffusive flux and transport?
If water is salty on the bottom of a tank, and fresh near the top, what direction will the diffusive flux of salt be?
What is the difference between molecular diffusion and turbulent diffusion?
What is the approximate time scale to mix a 0.2 m tall beaker of salt-stratified water if the turbulent diffusivity is $ 10^{-4}\ m^2s^{-1} $ instead of the molecular diffusivity of $ 10^{-9}\ m^2s^{-1}$?