Role of Ocean and Atmosphere Variability in Scale-Dependent Thermodynamic Air-Sea Interactions uri icon

abstract

  • AbstractThis study investigates the influence of oceanic and atmospheric processes in extratropical thermodynamic airsea interactions resolved by satellite observations (OBS) and by two climate model simulations run with eddyresolving highresolution (HR) and eddyparameterized lowresolution (LR) ocean components. Here, spectral methods are used to characterize the sea surface temperature (SST) and turbulent heat flux (THF) variability and covariability over scales between 50 and 10,000km and 60days to 80years in the Pacific Ocean. The relative roles of the ocean and atmosphere are interpreted using a stochastic upperocean temperature evolution model forced by noise terms representing intrinsic variability in each medium, defined using climate model data to produce realistic rather than white spectral power density distributions. The analysis of all datasets shows that the atmosphere dominates the SST and THF variability over zonal wavelengths larger than 2,0002,500km. In HR and OBS, ocean processes dominate the variability of both quantities at scales smaller than the atmospheric first internal Rossby radius of deformation (R1, 6002,000km) due to a substantial ocean forcing coinciding with a weaker atmospheric modulation of THF (and consequently of SST) than at larger scales. The ocean forcing also induces oscillations in SST and THF with periods ranging from intraseasonal to multidecadal, reflecting a red spectrum response to ocean forcing similar to that driven by atmospheric forcing. Such features are virtually absent in LR due to a weaker ocean forcing relative to HR.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-OCEANS

altmetric score

  • 10.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Laurindo, L. C., Small, R. J., Thompson, L., Siqueira, L., Bryan, F. O., Chang, P., ... Zhang, S.

citation count

  • 7

complete list of authors

  • Laurindo, Lucas C||Small, R Justin||Thompson, LuAnne||Siqueira, Leo||Bryan, Frank O||Chang, Ping||Danabasoglu, Gokhan||Kamenkovich, Igor V||Kirtman, Ben P||Wang, Hong||Zhang, Shaoqing

publication date

  • July 2022