Join us in the special session on the heating of the upper ocean by solar radiation with Dr. ZhongPing Lee.

The upper part of the ocean is heated up by solar radiation, which plays a critical role in the Earth system. Therefore, all numerical models for ocean dynamics include a module to quantify the penetration of solar radiation in the upper ocean. There is a rich literature on the modeling of the attenuation of this energy by constituents in water as well as the impact on the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. However, many of these modules used crude models to describe the attenuation of solar radiation, which result in large errors in describing the vertical profile of solar radiation, and subsequently, seriously impact the heating effect of the upper ocean.

In this presentation, a few aspects regarding the modeling of solar radiation in the upper ocean and its impact on ocean dynamics will be discussed in detail, with an objective to remind the community that crude models to describe the propagation of solar radiation in the ocean better be put behind us after substantial advancements in ocean optics and ocean color remote sensing. In turn, a more accurate assessment of the heating effect of the ocean by solar radiation could be obtained.

Speaker

Dr. ZhongPing Lee
Tang Shi-Feng Chair Professor, College of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Xiamen University

Dr. ZhongPing Lee got his Ph.D in 1994 from the University of South Florida. Dr. Lee is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and currently a Tang Shi-Feng Chair Professor at the College of Ocean and Earth Sciences of Xiamen University, China. Dr. Lee’s main research interests are in optical oceanography and ocean color remote sensing. He led the development of the widely used Quasi Analytical Algorithm (QAA) and the hyperspectral algorithm (HOPE) for processing both optically deep- and shallow-waters, along with various applications of satellite ocean color products. His theoretical work (2015) on the interpretation of Secchi disk depth (underwater visibility) overturned ~70 years of “classical theory” adopted by the ocean optics community. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles in mainstream scientific journals (>27,000 citations by Google Scholar), and is a member of many science teams for ocean color remote sensing.