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CliMA / SeawaterPolynomials.jl

Polynomials for efficiently computing the density of seawater
https://clima.github.io/SeawaterPolynomials.jl/dev
MIT License
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Use `a` and `b` for thermal and haline sensitivity to distinguish them with thermal expansion and haline contraction #30

Closed xkykai closed 9 months ago

xkykai commented 10 months ago

In the docs thermal sensitivity and expansion are expressed as $\alpha$, and haline sensitivity and contraction are expressed as $\beta$. However, the sensitivity differs with expansion/contraction by a factor of density $\rho_\mathrm{ref}$.

https://github.com/CliMA/SeawaterPolynomials.jl/blob/08b3532dfa9d938d12750050a614e4636949d1be/src/SeawaterPolynomials.jl#L109 https://github.com/CliMA/SeawaterPolynomials.jl/blob/08b3532dfa9d938d12750050a614e4636949d1be/src/SeawaterPolynomials.jl#L132

https://github.com/CliMA/SeawaterPolynomials.jl/blob/08b3532dfa9d938d12750050a614e4636949d1be/src/SeawaterPolynomials.jl#L11 https://github.com/CliMA/SeawaterPolynomials.jl/blob/08b3532dfa9d938d12750050a614e4636949d1be/src/SeawaterPolynomials.jl#L33

Not sure if anyone else might be confused by them at first glance but I was certainly confused by them for quite some time.

In Roquet et al. 2015 they distinguish these terms by using $a$ and $b$ for the sensitivities, if we agree that following their convention might be helpful and there is a need to distinguish them in the docs.

glwagner commented 10 months ago

Yes, we should definitely change the docs! I think we forgot to change the docs when we introduced the new functions thermal_sensitivity, etc