THEORETICAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF SUSPENDED PARTICLES IN THE OCEAN AND A COMPARISON WITH OBSERVATIONS

The vertical distribution of suspended particulate matter measured by filtration/weighing or by continuous optical profiling exhibits similar trends in large areas of the open ocean. Based on simple assumptions concerning the gradual dissolution of suspended particles and their dynamical behavior, theoretical particle distributions are derived. They are compared with a set of experimental data, that was collected in the North-East Atlantic. The comparison shows that the theoretical results have the same characteristic features as the observed distributions below the euphotic layer, suggesting that dissolution plays a major role in the change of the particle distribution with depth. The difference with other descriptions of the dissolution process is that here, a continuous size-spectrum is explicitly taken into account in the formulation of the problem.