RHO_VINT includes changes in SSH or not?

[christof_petrick@gfz-potsdam_de]

Dear Ocean Team,
I would like to determine the ocean bottom pressure, which is comparable to the variable “RHO_VINT” or “Vertical Integral of In-Situ Density”.
Now I would like to know if this vertical integral includes changes in the Sea Surface Height?
Or is it only the integral of the 60 vertical layers with fixed grid cell height?
In the second case the modeled ocean bottom pressure would be:
RHO_VINT + SSH*RHO(top layer)
in the first case the (SSH*RHO) would already be included in RHO_VINT. So what is the case?
Thank you for your help.
Christof

 

[bates]

In the ocean code, baroclinic,F90, here is the line that calculates RHO_VINT at each level k:

WORK1 = RHO(:,:,k,curtime,iblock) * dz(k)

where WORK1 gets accumulated into RHO_VINT. This does not take into account the surface height. You could potentially add the effect of SSH by calculating

rho(z=5m) * ssh

using the monthly means. There will be some error due to nonlinearites.

Susan
Ocean Model Science Liaison at NCAR