资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The ocean bottom is the Earth's least explored region, and the bottom mixed layer (BML) is the pathway for communication between the ocean interior and the ocean floor. In this study, we used full-depth conductivity-temperature-depth profiles archived by the World Ocean Circulation Experiment Program to obtain the first approximation of the global distribution of the oceanic BML thickness, H-BML, by applying an integrated method (Huang, Cen, et al., 2018, https://doi.orag/10.1175/jtech-d-18-0016.1). We found that the median H-BML values were 40, 42, and 64 m in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, respectively, and 47 m globally. Statistically, the peak values for the median H-BML were around 20 degrees N or 20 degrees S, and it had weak dependence on the buoyancy frequency, where a thin H-BML corresponded to strong stratification. In addition, the median H-BML became thicker with the ocean depth (D), according to H-BML = 26.34 + 0.85e((D/1271.8)).