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Intercomparison and validation of the mixed layer depth fields of global ocean syntheses

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Abstract

Intercomparison and evaluation of the global ocean surface mixed layer depth (MLD) fields estimated from a suite of major ocean syntheses are conducted. Compared with the reference MLDs calculated from individual profiles, MLDs calculated from monthly mean and gridded profiles show negative biases of 10–20 m in early spring related to the re-stratification process of relatively deep mixed layers. Vertical resolution of profiles also influences the MLD estimation. MLDs are underestimated by approximately 5–7 (14–16) m with the vertical resolution of 25 (50) m when the criterion of potential density exceeding the 10-m value by 0.03 kg m−3 is used for the MLD estimation. Using the larger criterion (0.125 kg m−3) generally reduces the underestimations. In addition, positive biases greater than 100 m are found in wintertime subpolar regions when MLD criteria based on temperature are used. Biases of the reanalyses are due to both model errors and errors related to differences between the assimilation methods. The result shows that these errors are partially cancelled out through the ensemble averaging. Moreover, the bias in the ensemble mean field of the reanalyses is smaller than in the observation-only analyses. This is largely attributed to comparably higher resolutions of the reanalyses. The robust reproduction of both the seasonal cycle and interannual variability by the ensemble mean of the reanalyses indicates a great potential of the ensemble mean MLD field for investigating and monitoring upper ocean processes.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The MILA-GPV dataset (Hosoda et al. 2010) is provided by the RCGC/JAMSTEC from their web site at http://www.jamstec.go.jp/ARGO/argo_web/MILAGPV/. The MLD dataset of de Boyer Montégut et al. (2004) is obtained from his web site at http://www.ifremer.fr/cerweb/deboyer/mld/home.php. The Argo float data are provided by the NODC/NOAA at their web site http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/WOD13/. This work was partly supported by the Research Program on Climate Change Adaptation (RECCA) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of the Japanese government (MEXT), by the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) of the MEXT, by the joint UK DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101), by the UK Public Weather Service Research Programme, and by the European Commission funded projects MyOcean (FP7-SPACE-2007-1) and MyOcean2 (FP7-SPACE-2011-1). During the preparation of this article, our co-author Nicolas Ferry passed away. He was an active and supportive member of the ORA-IP and CLIVAR-GSOP activities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oceanography and Geochemistry Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency (MRI/JMA), 1-1 Nagamine, Tsukuba, 305-0052, Japan

    Takahiro Toyoda, Yosuke Fujii, Tsurane Kuragano & Masafumi Kamachi

  2. Center for Earth Information Science and Technology, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (CEIST/JAMSTEC), Yokohama, Japan

    Yoichi Ishikawa & Toshiyuki Awaji

  3. Research and Development Center for Global Change (RCGC), JAMSTEC, Yokosuka, Japan

    Shuhei Masuda & Kanako Sato

  4. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Toshiyuki Awaji

  5. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Toulouse, France

    Fabrice Hernandez

  6. Mercator Océan, Ramonville Sant-Agne, France

    Fabrice Hernandez & Nicolas Ferry

  7. Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), Ramonville Sant-Agne, France

    Stéphanie Guinehut

  8. Met Office (UKMO), Exeter, UK

    Matthew J. Martin, K. Andrew Peterson & Simon A. Good

  9. National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), Department of Meteorology, University of Reading (U-Reading), Reading, UK

    Maria Valdivieso & Keith Haines

  10. Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Bologna, Italy

    Andrea Storto & Simona Masina

  11. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Bologna, Italy

    Simona Masina

  12. Universität Hamburg (U-Hamburg), Hamburg, Germany

    Armin Köhl

  13. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Reading, UK

    Hao Zuo & Magdalena Balmaseda

  14. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Melbourne, Australia

    Yonghong Yin, Li Shi & Oscar Alves

  15. Environment Canada, Québec, Canada

    Gregory Smith

  16. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (GFDL/NOAA), Princeton, NJ, USA

    You-Soon Chang

  17. Kongju National University, Kongju, South Korea

    You-Soon Chang

  18. Science System and Applications, Inc., Lanham, MD, USA

    Guillaume Vernieres

  19. Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC/NASA/GMAO), Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Guillaume Vernieres

  20. Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Xiaochun Wang

  21. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA

    Gael Forget & Patrick Heimbach

  22. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Ou Wang, Ichiro Fukumori & Tong Lee

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  1. Takahiro Toyoda
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  2. Yosuke Fujii
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Correspondence to Takahiro Toyoda.

Additional information

This paper is a contribution to the special issue on Ocean estimation from an ensemble of global ocean reanalyses consisting of papers from the Ocean Reanalyses Intercomparsion Project (ORAIP), coordinated by CLIVAR-GSOP and GODAE OceanView. The special issue also contains specific studies using single reanalysis systems.

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Toyoda, T., Fujii, Y., Kuragano, T. et al. Intercomparison and validation of the mixed layer depth fields of global ocean syntheses. Clim Dyn 49, 753–773 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2637-7

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