Although the wind stress is a measurement of the force of the wind upon the ocean surface, the ocean's response (e.g. mixed layer depth) is related to the work done on the ocean, usually parameterized in terms of the cube of the atmospheric friction velocity (Hellerman and Rosenstein 1983 and references therein). An estimate of the turbulent kinetic energy input into the ocean is given by (Oberhuber 1988):
where is the magnitude of the wind stress and
is the
density of sea water.