Salt - Fingers Fluxues

Salt - Fingering Theory

Salt-fingering was first theorized by oceanographer Melvin Stern who developed the basic instability theory. Eric Kunze developed a theory to explain why their microstructure signals were much weaker in ocean measurements than predicted by lab studies (Figs. 2-4; Kunze JMR 1987). This work predicted heat- and salt-fluxes 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than the lab flux laws.

Fig. 2: Schematic of the idealized vertical and horizontal structure of salt fingers.

Fig. 3: Growth rate σ of salt fingers as a function of wavelength λ and density ratio Rρ.

Fig. 4: Salt-flux predicted by theory (dotted) assuming that finger growth is terminated when the horizontal shear exceeds twice the stratification (∂w/∂x > 2N) as compared with lab studies and numerical simulations.

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