The surface layer is the layer of a turbulent fluid most affected by interaction with a solid surface or the surface separating a gas and a liquid where the characteristics of the turbulence depend on distance from the interface. Surface layers are characterized by large normal gradients of tangential velocity and large concentration gradients of any substances (temperature, moisture, sediments et cetera) transported to or from the interface.
The term boundary layer is used in meteorology and in physical oceanography. The atmospheric surface layer is the lowest part of the atmospheric boundary layer (typically the bottom 10% where the log wind profile is valid). The ocean has two surface layers: the benthic, found immediately above the sea floor and the marine surface layer, at the air-sea interface.
Read more about Surface Layer: Mathematical Formulation, Assumptions About The Mixing Length, The Surface Layer in Oceanography
Famous quotes containing the words surface and/or layer:
“We tend to be so bombarded with information, and we move so quickly, that there’s a tendency to treat everything on the surface level and process things quickly. This is antithetical to the kind of openness and perception you have to have to be receptive to poetry. ... poetry seems to exist in a parallel universe outside daily life in America.”
—Rita Dove (b. 1952)
“After a few months’ acquaintance with European “coffee,” one’s mind weakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the rich beverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream after all, and a thing which never existed.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)