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From measurements of the energy‐containing scales of turbulence in the ocean thermocline, two new formulations are examined: (1) an inviscid estimate for the viscous dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy and (2) a mixing length estimate for the turbulent heat flux. These formulations are tested using coincident measurements of the relevant properties of both energy‐containing and dissipation scales of stratified turbulence in the ocean's main thermocline obtained from a vertical microstructure profiler. It is found that energy‐containing scale estimates of both dissipation rate and heat flux compare favorably with dissipation scale estimates. Since the energy‐containing scales are many times greater than the dissipation scales, the measurement constraints on these new estimates are considerably less strict than for dissipation scale estimates of the same quantities. These observations also suggest that the timescale for viscous decay of turbulent motions is greater than that for diffusive smoothing of scalar fluctuations. It is argued that this is consistent with current estimates of mixing efficiencies.
James N. Moum (Sat,) studied this question.