Study of fine structure of temperature in the equatorial westernPacific Ocean with wavelet transform

By using the wavelet transform (WT), we analysed part of the CTD data rnllected from the equatorial western Pacific Ocean, the results show that the temperature fine structure has selfsimilarity and may be described with fractel.The singularity exponents of temperature series and their probability distributions are also calculated.The probability distribution functions(pdfs) have nearly a universal form.The nonzero probability at negative exponents implies the posmible existence of sigular points in the temperature profiles.When computing the averaged period of the WT, we end that the mean period Δ of the WT of the temperature series has a power dependence on the transform Beak a.i.e.,Δ-α^β, with β≈1.This suggests that a simple dichomotous cascading mechanism may govern the fine-strueture dynamics.In addtion, since the amplitudes of the wavelet transform is related with the strength of the temperature fluctuations, the vertical distribution of fluctuation energy can be calculated by wavelet transform.Compared to the FFT spectrum, the WT spectrum is,smooth and is capable of giving more accurate spectral slopes.