Effluent from diffuse hydrothermal venting. 1: A simple model of plumes from diffuse hydrothermal sources
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA (United States)
This paper focuses on modeling the fate of effluent from diffuse seafloor hydrothermal activity after it has been vented into the water column. The model was formulated using a number of simplifying assumptions which permit direct application of this model to field measurements. I have limited the configurations to those where the hydrothermal outflow velocities are smaller than horizontal current. I assume that the entrainment of ambient seawater into the plume is constant over the length of the plume. This permits formulation of a first-order relation for the rise height and dilution in a diffuse hydrothermal plume as a function of downstream distance. The analytic model is compared with a simple laboratory simulation of the hydrothermal flow. The results suggest that diffuse hydrothermal effluent will penetrate to a height in the water column that is proportional to the overall dimension of the diffuse vent patch, multiplied by a dimensionless plume intensity parameter. I also ahow relations for plume dilution which will be compared with field data in part 2 of this work.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 85441
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 99, Issue C9; Other Information: PBD: Sep 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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