Occasionally, floats penetrate well below the layer, some reaching depths exceeding 1 km. In 1998, some of the floats were seeded below the convective layer. These are eventually entrained into the convective layer as it deepens. A number of quantitative statistics can be extracted. The mixing time, equal to the time for a float to traverse the layer, is about a day.
Vertical velocity is well correlated with temperature, resulting in a vertical heat flux.
These direct measurement of the vertical velocity and temperature fluctuations associated with deep convection will allow direct comparisons with theory and numerical models. Mixing processes in these various environments are similar in many ways and we learn the most by comparing and contrasting them.