| sverdrup | |
|---|---|
 | |
| General information | |
| Unit of | volumetric flow rate |
| Symbol | Sv |
| Conversions | |
| 1 Svin ... | ... is equal to ... |
| m3/s | 1 million |
| US gallons/s | 264 million |
| cu ft/s | 35 million |
Inoceanography, thesverdrup (symbol:Sv) is a non-SImetric unit ofvolumetric flow rate, with1 Sv equal to 1 million cubic metres per second (35314667 cu ft/s),[1][2] or equivalently 1 cubichectometer per second (symbol: hm3/s or hm3⋅s−1). It is used almost exclusively inoceanography to measure the volumetric rate of transport ofocean currents. It is named afterHarald Sverdrup.
One sverdrup is about five times what is carried at the estuary by the world's largest river, theAmazon. In the context ofocean currents, a volume of one million cubic meters may be imagined as a "slice" of ocean with dimensions1 km ×1 km ×1 m (width × length × thickness) or a cube with dimensions100 m ×100 m ×100 m. At this scale, these units can be more easily compared in terms of width of the current (several km), depth (hundreds of meters), and current speed (asmeters per second). Thus, a hypothetical current50 km wide,500 m (0.5 km) deep, and moving at2 m/s would be transporting50 Sv of water.
The sverdrup is distinct from the SIsievert unit or the non-SIsvedberg unit. All three use the same symbol, but they are not related.
The sverdrup is named in honor of the Norwegian oceanographer, meteorologist and polar explorerHarald Ulrik Sverdrup (1888–1957), who wrote the 1942 volumeThe Oceans, Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology together with Martin W. Johnson and Richard H. Fleming.[3]
In the 1950s and early 1960s both Soviet and North American scientists contemplated thedamming of the Bering Strait, thus enabling temperate Atlantic water to heat up the coldArctic Sea and, the theory went, making Siberia and northern Canada more habitable. As part of the North American team, Canadian oceanographer Maxwell Dunbar found it "very cumbersome" to repeatedly reference millions of cubic meters per second. He casually suggested that as a new unit of water flow, "the inflow through Bering Strait is one sverdrup". At the Arctic Basin Symposium in October 1962, the unit came into general usage.[3]
The water transport in theGulf Stream gradually increases from30 Sv in theFlorida Current to a maximum of150 Sv south of Newfoundland at thelongitude 55° W.[4]
TheAntarctic Circumpolar Current, at approximately125 Sv, is the largest ocean current.[5]
The entire global input offresh water from rivers to the ocean is approximately1.2 Sv.[6]