scholarly journals Surface flux and ocean heat transport convergence contributions to seasonal and interannual variations of ocean heat content

2017 ◽  
Vol 122 (1) ◽  
pp. 726-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. Roberts ◽  
M. D. Palmer ◽  
R. P. Allan ◽  
D.G. Desbruyeres ◽  
P. Hyder ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transport ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Surface Flux ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Interannual Variations ◽  
Ocean Heat Transport ◽  
Seasonal And Interannual Variations

scholarly journals On Anomalous Ocean Heat Transport toward the Arctic and Associated Climate Predictability

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 689-704 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Årthun ◽  
Tor Eldevik
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transport ◽  
Air Temperature ◽  
Time Scale ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Surface Air Temperature ◽  
Meridional Overturning Circulation ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Ocean Heat Transport ◽  
Climate Predictability

Abstract A potential for climate predictability is rooted in anomalous ocean heat transport and its consequent influence on the atmosphere above. Here the propagation, drivers, and atmospheric impact of heat anomalies within the northernmost limb of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation are assessed using a multicentury climate model simulation. Consistent with observation-based inferences, simulated heat anomalies propagate from the eastern subpolar North Atlantic into and through the Nordic seas. The dominant time scale of associated climate variability in the northern seas is 14 years, including that of observed sea surface temperature and modeled ocean heat content, air–sea heat flux, and surface air temperature. A heat budget analysis reveals that simulated ocean heat content anomalies are driven by poleward ocean heat transport, primarily related to variable volume transport. The ocean’s influence on the atmosphere, and hence regional climate, is manifested in the model by anomalous ocean heat convergence driving subsequent changes in surface heat fluxes and surface air temperature. The documented northward propagation of thermohaline anomalies in the northern seas and their consequent imprint on the regional atmosphere—including the existence of a common decadal time scale of variability—detail a key aspect of eventual climate predictability.

scholarly journals Atlantic meridional ocean heat transport at 26° N: impact on subtropical ocean heat content variability

Ocean Science ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 1057-1069 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Sonnewald ◽  
J. J.-M. Hirschi ◽  
R. Marsh ◽  
E. L. McDonagh ◽  
B. A. King
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transport ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Box Model ◽  
Ocean Heat Transport ◽  
Overturning Circulation ◽  
The North ◽  
Meridional Overturning ◽  
The North Atlantic

Abstract. Local climate is significantly affected by changes in the oceanic heat content on a range of timescales. This variability is driven by heat fluxes from both the atmosphere and the ocean. In the Atlantic the meridional overturning circulation is the main contributor to the oceanic meridional heat transport for latitudes south of about 50° N. The RAPID project has been successfully monitoring the Atlantic meridional overturning at 26° N since 2004. This study demonstrates how these data can be used to estimate the variability of the basin-wide ocean heat content in the upper 800 m between 26° and 36° N. Traditionally the atmosphere is seen to dominate the ocean heat content variability. However, previous studies have looked at smaller areas in the Gulf Stream region, finding that the ocean dominates deseasoned fluctuations of ocean heat content, while studies of the whole North Atlantic region suggest that the atmosphere may be dominant. In our study we use a box model to investigate fluctuations of the ocean heat content in the subtropical North Atlantic between 26° and 36° N. The box model approach is validated using 19 yr of high-resolution general circulation model (GCM) data. We find that in both the GCM- and RAPID-based data the ocean heat transport dominates the deseasoned heat content variability, while the atmosphere's impact on the ocean heat content evolution stabilizes after 6 months. We demonstrate that the utility of the RAPID data goes beyond monitoring the overturning circulation at 26° N, and that it can be used to better understand the causes of ocean heat content variability in the North Atlantic. We illustrate this for a recent decrease in ocean heat content which was observed in the North Atlantic in 2009 and 2010. Our results suggest that most of this ocean heat content reduction can be explained by a reduction of the meridional ocean heat transport during this period.

scholarly journals Oceanic dominance of interannual subtropical North Atlantic heat content variability

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Sonnewald ◽  
J. J.-M. Hirschi ◽  
R. Marsh
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transport ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Ocean General Circulation Model ◽  
Heat Fluxes ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Box Model

Abstract. Ocean heat content varies on a range of timescales. Traditionally the atmosphere is seen to dominate the oceanic heat content variability. However, this variability can be driven either by oceanic or atmospheric heat fluxes. To diagnose the relative contributions and respective timescales, this study uses a box model forced with output from an ocean general circulation model (OGCM) to investigate the heat content variability of the upper 800 m of the subtropical North Atlantic from 26° N to 36° N. The ocean and air-sea heat flux data needed to force the box model is taken from a 19 yr (1988 to 2006) simulation performed with the 1/12° version of the OCCAM OGCM. The box model heat content is compared to the corresponding heat content in OCCAM for verification. The main goal of the study is to identify to what extent the seasonal to interannual ocean heat content variability is of atmospheric or oceanic origin. To this end, the box model is subjected to a range of scenarios forced either with the full (detrended) ocean and air-sea fluxes, or their deseasoned counterparts. Results show that in all cases, the seasonal variability is dominated by the seasonal component of the air-sea fluxes, which produce a seasonal range in mean temperature of the upper 800 m of ~ 0.42 °C. However, on longer timescales oceanic heat transport dominates, with changes of up to ~ 0.30 °C over 4 yr. The technique is subsequently applied to observational data. For the ocean heat fluxes, we use data from the RAPID program at 26° N from April 2004 to January 2011. At 36° N heat transport is inferred using a linear regression model based on the oceanic low-frequency transport in OCCAM. The air-sea flux from OCCAM is used for the period 2004 to 2006 when the RAPID timeseries and the OCCAM simulation overlap, and a climatology is used for the air-sea flux from 2006 onwards. The results confirm that on longer (> 2 yr) timescales the ocean dominates the ocean heat content variability, which is further verified using data from the ARGO project. This work illustrates that oceanic divergence significantly impacts the ocean heat content variability on timescales relevant for applications such as seasonal hurricane forecasts.

scholarly journals Variability in the global energy budget and transports 1985–2017

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 3381-3396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunlei Liu ◽  
Richard P. Allan ◽  
Michael Mayer ◽  
Patrick Hyder ◽  
Damien Desbruyères ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transport ◽  
Southern Hemisphere ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Surface Flux ◽  
Surface Fluxes ◽  
Heat Accumulation ◽  
Meridional Transport ◽  
Poleward Heat Transport ◽  
Energy Flows ◽  
Net Flux

Abstract The study of energy flows in the Earth system is essential for understanding current climate change. To understand how energy is accumulating and being distributed within the climate system, an updated reconstruction of energy fluxes at the top of atmosphere, surface and within the atmosphere derived from observations is presented. New satellite and ocean data are combined with an improved methodology to quantify recent variability in meridional and ocean to land heat transports since 1985. A global top of atmosphere net imbalance is found to increase from 0.10 ± 0.61 W m−2 over 1985–1999 to 0.62 ± 0.1 W m−2 over 2000–2016, and the uncertainty of ± 0.61 W m−2 is related to the Argo ocean heat content changes (± 0.1 W m−2) and an additional uncertainty applying prior to 2000 relating to homogeneity adjustments. The net top of atmosphere radiative flux imbalance is dominated by the southern hemisphere (0.36 ± 0.04 PW, about 1.41 ± 0.16 W m−2) with an even larger surface net flux into the southern hemisphere ocean (0.79 ± 0.16 PW, about 3.1 ± 0.6 W m−2) over 2006–2013. In the northern hemisphere the surface net flux is of opposite sign and directed from the ocean toward the atmosphere (0.44 ± 0.16 PW, about 1.7 ± 0.6 W m−2). The sea ice melting and freezing are accounted for in the estimation of surface heat flux into the ocean. The northward oceanic heat transports are inferred from the derived surface fluxes and estimates of ocean heat accumulation. The derived cross-equatorial oceanic heat transport of 0.50 PW is higher than most previous studies, and the derived mean meridional transport of 1.23 PW at 26° N is very close to 1.22 PW from RAPID observation. The surface flux contribution dominates the magnitude of the oceanic transport, but the integrated ocean heat storage controls the interannual variability. Poleward heat transport by the atmosphere at 30° N is found to increase after 2000 (0.17 PW decade−1). The multiannual mean (2006–2013) transport of energy by the atmosphere from ocean to land is estimated as 2.65 PW, and is closely related to the ENSO variability.

scholarly journals Atlantic Ocean Heat Transport Influences Interannual-to-Decadal Surface Temperature Predictability in the North Atlantic Region

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (17) ◽  
pp. 6763-6782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard F. Borchert ◽  
Wolfgang A. Müller ◽  
Johanna Baehr
Keyword(s):  
Surface Temperature ◽  
Heat Transport ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Ocean Heat Transport ◽  
North Atlantic Region ◽  
Atlantic Region ◽  
Northeast Atlantic ◽  
The North ◽  
The North Atlantic

An analysis of a three-member ensemble of initialized coupled simulations with the MPI-ESM-LR covering the period 1901–2010 shows that Atlantic northward ocean heat transport (OHT) at 50°N influences surface temperature variability in the North Atlantic region for several years. Three to ten years after strong OHT phases at 50°N, a characteristic pattern of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies emerges: warm anomalies are found in the North Atlantic and cold anomalies emerge in the Gulf Stream region. This pattern originates from persistent upper-ocean heat content anomalies that originate from southward-propagating OHT anomalies in the North Atlantic. Interannual-to-decadal SST predictability of yearly initialized hindcasts is linked to this SST pattern: when ocean heat transport at 50°N is strong at the initialization of a hindcast, SST anomaly correlation coefficients in the northeast Atlantic at lead years 2–9 are significantly higher than when the ocean heat transport at 50°N is weak at initialization. Surface heat fluxes that mask the predictable low-frequency oceanic variability that influences SSTs in the northwest Atlantic after strong OHT phases, and in the northwest and northeast Atlantic after weak OHT phases at 50°N lead to zonally asymmetrically predictable SSTs 7–9 years ahead. This study shows that the interannual-to-decadal predictability of North Atlantic SSTs depends strongly on the strength of subpolar ocean heat transport at the start of a prediction, indicating that physical mechanisms need to be taken into account for actual temperature predictions.

scholarly journals Comparison of ocean heat content from two eddy-resolving hindcast simulations with OFES1 and OFES2

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanglou Liao ◽  
Xiao Hua Wang ◽  
Zhiqiang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Heat Transport ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Potential Temperature ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Ocean General Circulation Model ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Spatial Distributions

Abstract. The ocean heat content (OHC) estimates from high-resolution hindcast simulations from the Ocean General Circulation Model for the Earth Simulator Version 1 (OFES1) and Version 2 (OFES2), and a global objective analysis of subsurface temperature observations (EN4.2.1) were compared. There was an OHC increase in most of the global ocean over a 57-year period, mainly a result of vertical displacements of neutral density surfaces. However, we found substantial differences in the temporal and meridional distributions of the OHC between the two OFES hindcasts. The spatial distributions of potential-temperature change also differed significantly, especially in the Atlantic Ocean. The spatial distributions of the time-averaged surface heat flux and heat transport from the OFES1 and OFES2 were highly correlated, but differences could be seen. However, these differences, more specifically in the heat transport, were only partially responsible for the OHC differences. The marked OHC differences may arise from the different vertical mixing schemes and may impact the large-scale pressure field, and thus the geostrophic current. The work here should be a useful reference for future OFES users.

scholarly journals Change of the Global Ocean Vertical Heat Transport over 1993–2010

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (14) ◽  
pp. 5319-5327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinfeng Liang ◽  
Christopher G. Piecuch ◽  
Rui M. Ponte ◽  
Gael Forget ◽  
Carl Wunsch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heat Flux ◽  
Heat Exchange ◽  
Heat Transport ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Global Ocean ◽  
Mixing Processes ◽  
State Estimate ◽  
Vertical Heat ◽  
Vertical Heat Flux

A dynamically and data-consistent ocean state estimate during 1993–2010 is analyzed for bidecadal changes in the mechanisms of heat exchange between the upper and lower oceans. Many patterns of change are consistent with prior studies. However, at various levels above 1800 m the global integral of the change in ocean vertical heat flux involves the summation of positive and negative regional contributions and is not statistically significant. The nonsignificance of change in the global ocean vertical heat transport from an ocean state estimate that provides global coverage and regular sampling, spatially and temporally, raises the question of whether an adequate observational database exists to assess changes in the upper ocean heat content over the past few decades. Also, whereas the advective term largely determines the spatial pattern of the change in ocean vertical heat flux, its global integral is not significantly different from zero. In contrast, the diffusive term, although regionally weak except in high-latitude oceans, produces a statistically significant extra downward heat flux during the 2000s. This result suggests that besides ocean advection, ocean mixing processes, including isopycnal and diapycnal as well as convective mixing, are important for the decadal variation of the heat exchange between upper and deep oceans as well. Furthermore, the analyses herein indicate that focusing on any particular region in explaining changes of the global ocean heat content is misleading.

Interannual Variations in Upper-Ocean Heat Content and Heat Transport Convergence in the Western North Atlantic

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (11) ◽  
pp. 2682-2697 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenfu Dong ◽  
Susan L. Hautala ◽  
Kathryn A. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
North Atlantic ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Heat Fluxes ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Upper Ocean ◽  
Interannual Variations ◽  
Upper Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Surface Heat Fluxes ◽  
Storage Rate ◽  
Geostrophic Advection

Abstract Subsurface temperature data in the western North Atlantic Ocean are analyzed to study the variations in the heat content above a fixed isotherm and contributions from surface heat fluxes and oceanic processes. The study region is chosen based on the data density; its northern boundary shifts with the Gulf Stream position and its southern boundary shifts to contain constant volume. The temperature profiles are objectively mapped to a uniform grid (0.5° latitude and longitude, 10 m in depth, and 3 months in time). The interannual variations in upper-ocean heat content show good agreement with the changes in the sea surface height from the Ocean Topography Experiment (TOPEX)/Poseidon altimeter; both indicate positive anomalies in 1994 and 1998–99 and negative anomalies in 1996–97. The interannual variations in surface heat fluxes cannot explain the changes in upper-ocean heat storage rate. On the contrary, a positive anomaly in heat released to the atmosphere corresponds to a positive upper-ocean heat content anomaly. The oceanic heat transport, mainly owing to the geostrophic advection, controls the interannual variations in heat storage rate, which suggests that geostrophic advection plays an important role in the air–sea heat exchange. The 18°C isotherm depth and layer thickness also show good correspondence to the upper-ocean heat content; a deep and thin 18°C layer corresponds to a positive heat content anomaly. The oceanic transport in each isotherm layer shows an annual cycle, converging heat in winter, and diverging in summer in a warm layer; it also shows interannual variations with the largest heat convergence occurring in even warmer layers during the period of large ocean-to-atmosphere flux.

scholarly journals Multidecadal Changes of the Upper Indian Ocean Heat Content during 1965–2016

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (19) ◽  
pp. 7863-7884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanlong Li ◽  
Weiqing Han ◽  
Aixue Hu ◽  
Gerald A. Meehl ◽  
Fan Wang
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Heat Transport ◽  
General Circulation ◽  
Heat Content ◽  
Circulation Model ◽  
Ocean Heat Content ◽  
Western Boundary ◽  
Ocean Heat Uptake ◽  
Easterly Wind ◽  
Downward Longwave Radiation

Ocean heat uptake is the primary heat sink of the globe and modulates its surface warming rate. In situ observations during the past half century documented obvious multidecadal variations in the upper-ocean heat content (0–400 m; OHC400) of the Indian Ocean (IO). The observed OHC400 showed an increase of (5.9 ± 2.5) × 1021 J decade−1 during 1965–79, followed by a decrease of (−5.2 ± 2.5) × 1021 J decade−1 during 1980–96, and a rapid increase of (13.6 ± 1.1) × 1021 J decade−1 during 2000–14. These variations are faithfully reproduced by an Indo-Pacific simulation of an ocean general circulation model (OGCM), and insights into the underlying mechanisms are gained through OGCM experiments. The Pacific wind forcing through the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) was the leading driver of the basin-integrated OHC400 increase during 1965–79 and the decrease during 1980–96, whereas after 2000 local wind and heat flux forcing within the IO made a larger contribution. The ITF heat transport is primarily dictated by Pacific trade winds. It directly affects the south IO, after which the signatures can enter the north IO through the meridional heat transport of the western boundary current. The prevailing warming of the western-to-central IO for 2000–14 was largely induced by equatorial easterly wind trends, Ekman downwelling off the equator, and northeasterly wind trends over the west Asia–East Africa coastal region. The increasing downward longwave radiation, probably reflecting anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing, overcame the decreasing surface shortwave radiation and also made a significant contribution to the rapid upper-IO warming after 2000.

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