ALBERT

Description: A seasonally forced 1/12° global ocean/sea ice simulation is used to characterize the spatiotemporal inverse cascade of kinetic energy (KE). Nonlinear scale interactions associated with relative vorticity advection are evaluated using cross-spectral analysis in the frequency–wavenumber domain from sea level anomaly (SLA) time series. This analysis is applied within four eddy-active midlatitude regions having large intrinsic variability spread over a wide range of scales. Over these four regions, mesoscale surface KE is shown to spontaneously cascade toward larger spatial scales—between the deformation scale and the Rhines scale—and longer time scales (possibly exceeding 10 years). Other nonlinear processes might have to be invoked to explain the longer time scales of intrinsic variability, which have a substantial surface imprint at midlatitudes. The analysis of a fully forced 1/12° hindcast shows that low-frequency and synoptic atmospheric forcing barely affects this inverse KE cascade. The inverse cascade is also at work in a 1/4° simulation, albeit with a weaker intensity, consistent with the weaker intrinsic variability found at this coarser resolution. In the midlatitude North Pacific, the spatiotemporal cascade transfers KE from high-frequency frontal Rossby waves (FRWs), probably generated by baroclinic instability, toward the lower-frequency, westward-propagating mesoscale eddy (WME) field. The WMEs provide local gradients of potential vorticity that support these short Doppler-shifted FRWs. FRWs have periods shorter than 2 months and might be subsampled by altimetric observations, perhaps explaining why the temporal inverse cascade deduced from high-resolution models and mapped altimeter products can be quite different. The nature of the nonlinear interactions between FRWs and WMEs remains unclear but might involve wave turbulence processes.

Description: This study investigates the origin and features of interannual–decadal Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variability from several ocean simulations, including a large (50 member) ensemble of global, eddy-permitting (1/4°) ocean–sea ice hindcasts. After an initial stochastic perturbation, each member is driven by the same realistic atmospheric forcing over 1960–2015. The magnitude, spatiotemporal scales, and patterns of both the atmospherically forced and intrinsic–chaotic interannual AMOC variability are then characterized from the ensemble mean and ensemble spread, respectively. The analysis of the ensemble-mean variability shows that the AMOC fluctuations north of 40°N are largely driven by the atmospheric variability, which forces meridionally coherent fluctuations reaching decadal time scales. The amplitude of the intrinsic interannual AMOC variability never exceeds the atmospherically forced contribution in the Atlantic basin, but it reaches up to 100% of the latter around 35°S and 60% in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes. The intrinsic AMOC variability exhibits a large-scale meridional coherence, especially south of 25°N. An EOF analysis over the basin shows two large-scale leading modes that together explain 60% of the interannual intrinsic variability. The first mode is likely excited by intrinsic oceanic processes at the southern end of the basin and affects latitudes up to 40°N; the second mode is mostly restricted to, and excited within, the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes. These features of the intrinsic, chaotic variability (intensity, patterns, and random phase) are barely sensitive to the atmospheric evolution, and they strongly resemble the “pure intrinsic” interannual AMOC variability that emerges in climatological simulations under repeated seasonal-cycle forcing. These results raise questions about the attribution of observed and simulated AMOC signals and about the possible impact of intrinsic signals on the atmosphere.

Description: Mechanisms driving the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) variability at low frequency are of central interest for accurate climate predictions. Although the subpolar gyre region has been identified as a preferred place for generating climate time-scale signals, their southward propagation remains under consideration, complicating the interpretation of the observed time series provided by the Rapid Climate Change–Meridional Overturning Circulation and Heatflux Array–Western Boundary Time Series (RAPID–MOCHA–WBTS) program. In this study, we aim at disentangling the respective contribution of the local atmospheric forcing from signals of remote origin for the subtropical low-frequency AMOC variability. We analyze for this a set of four ensembles of a regional (20°S–55°N), eddy-resolving (1/12°) North Atlantic oceanic configuration, where surface forcing and open boundary conditions are alternatively permuted from fully varying (realistic) to yearly repeating signals. Their analysis reveals the predominance of local, atmospherically forced signal at interannual time scales (2–10 years), whereas signals imposed by the boundaries are responsible for the decadal (10–30 years) part of the spectrum. Due to this marked time-scale separation, we show that, although the intergyre region exhibits peculiarities, most of the subtropical AMOC variability can be understood as a linear superposition of these two signals. Finally, we find that the decadal-scale, boundary-forced AMOC variability has both northern and southern origins, although the former dominates over the latter, including at the site of the RAPID array (26.5°N).

Description: We investigate in this paper the sensitivity of the representation of the Denmark Strait overflow produced by a regional z-coordinate configuration of NEMO (version 3.6) to the horizontal and vertical grid resolutions and to various numerical and physical parameters. Three different horizontal resolutions, 1∕12, 1∕36, and 1/60∘, are respectively used with 46, 75, 150, and 300 vertical levels. In the given numerical set-up, the increase in the vertical resolution did not bring improvement at eddy-permitting resolution (1/12∘). We find a greater dilution of the overflow as the number of vertical level increases, and the worst solution is the one with 300 vertical levels. It is found that when the local slope of the grid is weaker than the slope of the topography the result is a more diluted vein. Such a grid enhances the dilution of the plume in the ambient fluid and produces its thickening. Although the greater number of levels allows for a better resolution of the ageostrophic Ekman flow in the bottom layer, the final result also depends on how the local grid slope matches the topographic slope. We also find that for a fixed number of levels, the representation of the overflow is improved when horizontal resolution is increased to 1∕36 and 1/60∘, with the most drastic improvements being obtained with 150 levels. With such a number of vertical levels, the enhanced vertical mixing associated with the step-like representation of the topography remains limited to a thin bottom layer representing a minor portion of the overflow. Two major additional players contribute to the sinking of the overflow: the breaking of the overflow into boluses of dense water which contribute to spreading the overflow waters along the Greenland shelf and within the Irminger Basin, and the resolved vertical shear that results from the resolution of the bottom Ekman boundary layer dynamics. This improves the accuracy of the calculation of the entrainment by the turbulent kinetic energy mixing scheme (as it depends on the local shear) and improves the properties of the overflow waters such that they more favourably compare with observations. At 300 vertical levels the dilution is again increased for all horizontal resolutions. The impact on the overflow representation of many other numerical parameters was tested (momentum advection scheme, lateral friction, bottom boundary layer parameterization, closure parameterization, etc.), but none had a significant impact on the overflow representation.

Description: Because of the irregular sampling pattern of raw altimeter data, many oceanographic applications rely on information from sea surface height (SSH) products gridded on regular grids where gaps have been filled with interpolation. Today, the operational SSH products are created using the simple, but robust, optimal interpolation (OI) method. If well tuned, the OI becomes computationally cheap and provides accurate results at low resolution. However, OI is not adapted to produce high-resolution and high-frequency maps of SSH. To improve the interpolation of SSH satellite observations, a data-driven approach (i.e., constructing a dynamical forecast model from the data) was recently proposed: analog data assimilation (AnDA). AnDA adaptively chooses analog situations from a catalog of SSH scenes—originating from numerical simulations or a large database of observations—which allow the temporal propagation of physical features at different scales, while each observation is assimilated. In this article, we review the AnDA and OI algorithms and compare their skills in numerical experiments. The experiments are observing system simulation experiments (OSSE) on the Lorenz-63 system and on an SSH reconstruction problem in the Gulf of Mexico. The results show that AnDA, with no necessary tuning, produces comparable reconstructions as does OI with tuned parameters. Moreover, AnDA manages to reconstruct the signals at higher frequencies than OI. Finally, an important additional feature for any interpolation method is to be able to assess the quality of its reconstruction. This study shows that the standard deviation estimated by AnDA is flow dependent, hence more informative on the reconstruction quality, than the one estimated by OI.

Description: A global 1/4° ocean/sea ice 50-member ensemble simulation is used to disentangle the low-frequency imprints of the atmospherically forced oceanic variability and of the chaotic intrinsic oceanic variability (IOV) on the large-scale (10° × 10°) ocean heat content (OHC) between 1980 and 2010. The IOV explains most of the interannual-to-decadal large-scale OHC variance over substantial fractions of the global ocean area that increase with depth: 9%, 22%, and 31% in the 0–700 m, 700–2000 m and 2000 m bottom layers, respectively. Such areas concern principally eddy-active regions, mostly found in the Southern Ocean and in western boundary current extensions, and also concern the subtropical gyres at intermediate and deep levels. The oceanic chaos may also induce random multidecadal fluctuations so that large-scale regional OHC trends computed on the 1980–2010 period cannot be unambiguously attributed to the atmospheric forcing in several oceanic basins at various depths. These results are likely to raise detection and attribution issues from real observations. ©2017. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

Description: This paper evaluates in a realistic context the local contributions of direct atmospheric forcing and intrinsic oceanic processes on interannual sea level anomalies (SLAs). A ¼° global ocean–sea ice general circulation model, driven over 47 yr by the full range of atmospheric time scales, is quantitatively assessed against altimetry and shown to reproduce most observed features of the interannual SLA variability from 1993 to 2004. Comparing this simulation with a second driven only by the climatological annual cycle reveals that the intrinsic part of the total interannual SLA variance exceeds 40% over half of the open-ocean area and exceeds 80% over one-fifth of it. This intrinsic contribution is particularly strong in eddy-active regions (more than 70%–80% in the Southern Ocean and western boundary current extensions) as predicted by idealized studies, as well as within the 20°–35° latitude bands. The atmosphere directly forces most of the interannual SLA variance at low latitudes and in most midlatitude eastern basins, in particular north of about 40°N in the Pacific. The interannual SLA variance is almost entirely due to intrinsic processes south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current in the Indian Ocean sector, while half of this variance is forced by the atmosphere north of it. The same simulations were performed and analyzed at 2° resolution as well: switching to this laminar regime yields a comparable forced variability (large-scale distribution and magnitude) but almost suppresses the intrinsic variability. This likely explains why laminar ocean models largely underestimate the interannual SLA variance.

Description: In high-resolution ocean general circulation models (OGCMs), as in process-oriented models, a substantial amount of interannual to decadal variability is generated spontaneously by oceanic nonlinearities: that is, without any variability in the atmospheric forcing at these time scales. The authors investigate the temporal and spatial scales at which this intrinsic oceanic variability has the strongest imprints on sea level anomalies (SLAs) using a ° global OGCM, by comparing a “hindcast” driven by the full range of atmospheric time scales with its counterpart forced by a repeated climatological atmospheric seasonal cycle. Outputs from both simulations are compared within distinct frequency–wavenumber bins. The fully forced hindcast is shown to reproduce the observed distribution and magnitude of low-frequency SLA variability very accurately. The small-scale (L 〈 6°) SLA variance is, at all time scales, barely sensitive to atmospheric variability and is almost entirely of intrinsic origin. The high-frequency (mesoscale) part and the low-frequency part of this small-scale variability have almost identical geographical distributions, supporting the hypothesis of a nonlinear temporal inverse cascade spontaneously transferring kinetic energy from high to low frequencies. The large-scale (L 〉 12°) low-frequency variability is mostly related to the atmospheric variability over most of the global ocean, but it is shown to remain largely intrinsic in three eddy-active regions: the Gulf Stream, Kuroshio, and Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC). Compared to its ¼° predecessor, the authors’ ° OGCM is shown to yield a stronger intrinsic SLA variability, at both mesoscale and low frequencies.

Description: Observational studies have shown that in many regions of the World Ocean the eddy kinetic energy (EKE) significantly varies on interannual time scales. Comparing altimeter-derived EKE maps for 1993 and 1996, Stammer and Wunsch have mentioned a significant meridional redistribution of EKE in the North Atlantic Ocean and suggested the possible influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) cycle. This hypothesis is examined using 7 yr of Ocean Topography Experiment (TOPEX)/Poseidon altimeter data and three ⅙°-resolution Atlantic Ocean model simulations performed over the period 1979–2000 during the French “CLIPPER” experiment. The subpolar–subtropical meridional contrast of EKE in the real ocean appears to vary on interannual time scales, and the model reproduces it realistically. The NAO cycle forces the meridional contrast of energy input by the wind. The analysis in this paper suggests that after 1993 the large amplitude of the NAO cycle induces changes in the transport of the baroclinically unstable large-scale circulation (Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Current) and, thus, changes in the EKE distribution. Model results suggest that NAO-like fluctuations were not followed by EKE redistributions before 1994, probably because NAO oscillations were weaker. Strong NAO events after 1994 were followed by gyre-scale EKE fluctuations with a 4–12-month lag, suggesting that complex, nonlinear adjustment processes are involved in this oceanic adjustment.