Microstructure measurements were collected using an autonomous freely risingprofiler under a variety of different atmospheric forcing and sea states inthe open ocean. Here, profiles of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate,ε, are compared with various proposed scalings. In the oceanicboundary layer, the depth dependence of ε was found to be largelyconsistent with that expected for a shear-driven wall layer. This is incontrast with many recent studies which suggest higher rates of turbulentkinetic energy dissipation in the near surface of the ocean. However, somedissipation profiles appeared to scale with the sum of the wind and swellgenerated Stokes shear with this scaling extending beyond the mixed layerdepth. Integrating ε in the mixed layer yielded results that 1%of the wind power referenced to 10 m is being dissipated here.
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