glidertools.physics.potential_density

glidertools.physics.potential_density(salt_PSU, temp_C, pres_db, lat, lon, pres_ref=0)

Calculate density from glider measurements of salinity and temperature.

The Basestation calculates density from absolute salinity and potential temperature. This function is a wrapper for this functionality, where potential temperature and absolute salinity are calculated first. Note that a reference pressure of 0 is used by default.

Parameters:
  • salt_PSU (array, dtype=float, shape=[n, ]) – practical salinty
  • temp_C (array, dtype=float, shape=[n, ]) –
  • in deg C (temperature) –
  • pres_db (array, dtype=float, shape=[n, ]) – pressure in decibar
  • lat (array, dtype=float, shape=[n, ]) – latitude in degrees north
  • lon (array, dtype=float, shape=[n, ]) – longitude in degrees east
Returns:

potential_density
Return type:

array, dtype=float, shape=[n, ]

Note

Using seawater.dens does not yield the same results as this function. We get very close results to what the SeaGlider Basestation returns with this function. The difference of this function with the basestation is on average ~ 0.003 kg/m3