Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 22 (2009): 4066–4082, doi:10.1175/2009JCLI2629.1.
Description:
Small-scale variation in wind stress due to ocean–atmosphere interaction within the atmospheric boundary layer alters the temporal and spatial scale of Ekman pumping driving the double-gyre circulation of the ocean. A high-resolution quasigeostrophic (QG) ocean model, coupled to a dynamic atmospheric mixed layer, is used to demonstrate that, despite the small spatial scale of the Ekman-pumping anomalies, this phenomenon significantly modifies the large-scale ocean circulation. The primary effect is to decrease the strength of the nonlinear component of the gyre circulation by approximately 30%–40%. This result is due to the highest transient Ekman-pumping anomalies destabilizing the flow in a dynamically sensitive region close to the western boundary current separation. The instability of the jet produces a flux of potential vorticity between the two gyres that acts to weaken both gyres.
Description:
AH and WD were supported
by an ARC Linkage International Grant (LX0668781). WD was also supported by NSF Grants OCE 0424227
and OCE 0550139. Funding for PB was provided by
NSF Grants OCE 0344094 and OCE 0725796 and by the
research grant from the Newton Trust of the University
of Cambridge. SK was supported by U.S. DOE Grant
DE-FG02–02ER63413 and NASA Grant NNG-06-
AG66G-1.
Keywords:
Airndashsea interaction
;
Coupled models
;
Mesoscale processes
;
Wind stress
;
Ekman pumping/transport
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
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