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3. Observations of Biologically Generated Turbulence in a Coastal Inlet
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5. The rate at which potential energy increases due to turbulent mixing is KN 2 where K is the turbulent diffusivity. The ratio KN 2 /ϵ defines the mixing efficiency Γ the fraction of total energy that goes into mixing. The remaining (1 - Γ)ϵ is the rate at which turbulent kinetic energy is dissipated as heat and an energy balance requires that ϵ = KN 2 + (1 - Γ)ϵ. Turbulent diffusivity can be estimated from Richardson's law K ≈ [(1 - Γ)ϵ L 4 ] 1/3 . The form of the mixing efficiency as a function of the integral length scale L and the buoyancy scale B = (ϵ/ N 3 ) ½ thus follows: Γ ≈ Γ 0 for L ≥ B and Γ ≈ ( L / B ) >4/3 for L < B. Theoretically Γ 0 can approach 1 although observations indicate that it is close to 0.2 (15 16).