ALBERT

Description: The first in situ measurements of seawater density that referred to a geographical position at sea and time of the year were carried out by Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsili between 1679 and 1680 in the Adriatic Sea, Aegean Sea, Marmara Sea, and the Bosporus. Not only was this the first investigation with documented oceanographic measurements carried out at stations, but themeasurements were described in such an accurateway that the authorswere able to reconstruct the observations in modern units. These first measurements concern the ‘‘specific gravity’’ of seawaters (i.e., the ratio between fluid densities). The data reported in the historical oceanographic treatise Osservazioni intorno al Bosforo Tracio (Marsili) allowed the reconstruction of the seawater density at different geographic locations between 1679 and 1680. Marsili’s experimental methodology included the collection of surface and deep water samples, the analysis of the samples with a hydrostatic ampoule, and the use of a reference water to standardize the measurements.Acomparison of reconstructed densities with present-day values shows an agreement within 10%–20% uncertainty, owing to various aspects of the measurement methodology that are difficult to reconstruct from the documentary evidence. Marsili also measured the current speed and the depth of the current inversion in the Bosporus, which are consistent with the present-day knowledge. The experimental data collected in the Bosporus enabledMarsili to enunciate a theory on the cause of the two-layer flow at the strait, demonstrated by his laboratory experiment and later confirmed by many analytical and numerical studies.

Description: American Meteorological Society.

Description: Published

Description: 845 - 860

Description: 4A. Oceanografia e clima

Description: JCR Journal

Description: The West Spitsbergen Current (WSC) is a topographically steered boundary current that transports warm Atlantic Water northward in Fram Strait. The 16 yr (1997–2012) current and temperature–salinity measurements from moorings in the WSC at 78°50′N reveal the dynamics of mesoscale variability in the WSC and the central Fram Strait. A strong seasonality of the fluctuations and the proposed driving mechanisms is described. In winter, water is advected in the WSC that has been subjected to strong atmospheric cooling in the Nordic Seas, and as a result the stratification in the top 250 m is weak. The current is also stronger than in summer and has a greater vertical shear. This results in an e-folding growth period for baroclinic instabilities of about half a day in winter, indicating that the current has the ability to rapidly grow unstable and form eddies. In summer, the WSC is significantly less unstable with an e-folding growth period of 2 days. Observations of the eddy kinetic energy (EKE) show a peak in the boundary current in January–February when it is most unstable. Eddies are then likely advected westward, and the EKE peak is observed 1–2 months later in the central Fram Strait. Conversely, the EKE in the WSC as well as in the central Fram Strait is reduced by a factor of more than 3 in late summer. Parameterizations for the expected EKE resulting from baroclinic instability can account for the observed EKE values. Hence, mesoscale instability can generate the observed variability, and high-frequency wind forcing is not required to explain the observed EKE.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in he balance of salinity variance in a partially stratified estuary: Implications for exchange flow, mixing, and stratification. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 48(12), (2018) 2887-2899., doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-18-0032.1.

Description: Salinity variance dissipation is related to exchange flow through the salinity variance balance equation, and meanwhile its magnitude is also proportional to the turbulence production and stratification inside the estuary. As river flow increases, estuarine volume-integrated salinity variance dissipation increases owing to more variance input from the open boundaries driven by exchange flow and river flow. This corresponds to the increased efficient conversion of turbulence production to salinity variance dissipation due to the intensified stratification with higher river flow. Through the spring–neap cycle, the temporal variation of salinity variance dissipation is more dependent on stratification than turbulence production, so it reaches its maximum during the transition from neap to spring tides. During most of the transition time from spring to neap tides, the advective input of salinity variance from the open boundaries is larger than dissipation, resulting in the net increase of variance, which is mainly expressed as vertical variance, that is, stratification. The intensified stratification in turn increases salinity variance dissipation. During neap tides, a large amount of enhanced salinity variance dissipation is induced by the internal shear stress near the halocline. During most of the transition time from neap to spring tides, dissipation becomes larger than the advective input, so salinity variance decreases and the stratification is destroyed.

Description: TW was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant 2017YFA0604104), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 41706002), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant BK20170864), and MEL Visiting Fellowship (MELRS1617). WRG was supported by NSF Grant OCE 1736539. Part of this work is finished during TW’s visit in MEL and WHOI. We would like to acknowledge John Warner for providing the codes of the Hudson estuary model, and Parker MacCready, the editor, and two reviewers for their insightful suggestions on improving the manuscript.

Description: 2019-06-06

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 Physical Oceanography 45 (2015): 2913–2932, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-14-0179.1.

Description: The oceanic deep circulation is shared between concentrated deep western boundary currents (DWBCs) and broader interior pathways, a process that is sensitive to seafloor topography. This study investigates the spreading and deepening of Denmark Strait overflow water (DSOW) in the western subpolar North Atlantic using two ° eddy-resolving Atlantic simulations, including a passive tracer injected into the DSOW. The deepest layers of DSOW transit from a narrow DWBC in the southern Irminger Sea into widespread westward flow across the central Labrador Sea, which remerges along the Labrador coast. This abyssal circulation, in contrast to the upper levels of overflow water that remain as a boundary current, blankets the deep Labrador Sea with DSOW. Farther downstream after being steered around the abrupt topography of Orphan Knoll, DSOW again leaves the boundary, forming cyclonic recirculation cells in the deep Newfoundland basin. The deep recirculation, mostly driven by the meandering pathway of the upper North Atlantic Current, leads to accumulation of tracer offshore of Orphan Knoll, precisely where a local maximum of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) inventory is observed. At Flemish Cap, eddy fluxes carry ~20% of the tracer transport from the boundary current into the interior. Potential vorticity is conserved as the flow of DSOW broadens at the transition from steep to less steep continental rise into the Labrador Sea, while around the abrupt topography of Orphan Knoll, potential vorticity is not conserved and the DSOW deepens significantly.

Description: This work is supported by ONR Award N00014-09-1-0587, the NSF Physical Oceanography Program, and NASA Ocean Surface Topography Science Team Program.

Description: 2016-06-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3139-3154, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0042.1.

Description: Downfront, or downwelling favorable, winds are commonly found over buoyant coastal plumes. It is known that these winds can result in mixing of the plume with the ambient water and that the winds influence the transport, spatial extent, and stability of the plumes. In the present study, the interaction of the Ekman velocity in the surface layer and baroclinic instability supported by the strong horizontal density gradient of the plume is explored with the objective of understanding the potential vorticity and buoyancy budgets. The approach makes use of an idealized numerical model and scaling theory. It is shown that when winds are present the weak stratification resulting from vertical mixing and the strong baroclinicity of the front results in near-zero average potential vorticity q. For weak to moderate winds, the reduction of q by diapycnal mixing is balanced by the generation of q through the geostrophic stress term in the regions of strong horizontal density gradients and stable stratification. However, for very strong winds the wind stress overwhelms the geostrophic stress and leads to a reduction in q, which is balanced by the vertical mixing term. In the absence of winds, the geostrophic stress dominates mixing and the flow rapidly restratifies. Nonlinearity, extremes of relative vorticity and vertical velocity, and mixing are all enhanced by the presence of a coast. Scaling estimates developed for the eddy buoyancy flux, the surface potential vorticity flux, and the diapycnal mixing rate compare well with results diagnosed from a series of numerical model calculations.

Description: This study was supported by NSF Grants OCE-1433170 (MAS) and OCE-1459677 (LNT).

Description: 2017-04-07

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3011-3029, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0248.1.

Description: Seasonal variability of the tropical Atlantic circulation is dominated by the annual cycle, but semiannual variability is also pronounced, despite weak forcing at that period. This study uses multiyear, full-depth velocity measurements from the central equatorial Atlantic to analyze the vertical structure of annual and semiannual variations of zonal velocity. A baroclinic modal decomposition finds that the annual cycle is dominated by the fourth mode and the semiannual cycle is dominated by the second mode. Similar local behavior is found in a high-resolution general circulation model. This simulation reveals that the annual and semiannual cycles of the respective dominant baroclinic modes are associated with characteristic basinwide structures. Using an idealized, linear, reduced-gravity model to simulate the dynamics of individual baroclinic modes, it is shown that the observed circulation variability can be explained by resonant equatorial basin modes. Corollary simulations of the reduced-gravity model with varying basin geometry (i.e., square basin vs realistic coastlines) or forcing (i.e., spatially uniform vs spatially variable wind) show a structural robustness of the simulated basin modes. A main focus of this study is the seasonal variability of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) as identified in recent observational studies. Main characteristics of the observed EUC including seasonal variability of transport, core depth, and maximum core velocity can be explained by the linear superposition of the dominant equatorial basin modes as obtained from the reduced-gravity model.

Description: This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft as part of the Sonderforschungsbereich 754 (SFB754) ‘‘Climate–Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean’’ and through several research cruises with R/V Meteor, R/V Maria S. Merian, andR/VL’Atalante by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the cooperative projects RACE (03F0605B) and SACUS (03G0837A) and by European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007–13) under Grant Agreement 603521 PREFACE project.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 2735-2768, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0134.1.

Description: In Greenland’s glacial fjords, heat and freshwater are exchanged between glaciers and the ocean. Submarine melting of glaciers has been implicated as a potential trigger for recent glacier acceleration, and observations of ocean heat transport are increasingly being used to infer the submarine melt rates. The complete heat, salt, and mass budgets that underlie such methods, however, have been largely neglected. Here, a new framework for exploring glacial fjord budgets is developed. Building on estuarine studies of salt budgets, the heat, salt, and mass transports through the fjord are decomposed, and new equations for calculating freshwater fluxes from submarine meltwater and runoff are presented. This method is applied to moored records from Sermilik Fjord, near the terminus of Helheim Glacier, to evaluate the dominant balances in the fjord budgets and to estimate freshwater fluxes. Throughout the year, two different regimes are found. In the nonsummer months, advective transports are balanced by changes in heat/salt storage within their ability to measure; freshwater fluxes cannot be inferred as a residual. In the summer, a mean exchange flow emerges, consisting of inflowing Atlantic water and outflowing glacially modified water. This exchange transports heat toward the glacier and is primarily balanced by changes in storage and latent heat for melting ice. The total freshwater flux increases over the summer, reaching 1200 ± 700 m3 s−1 of runoff and 1500 ± 500 m3 s−1 of submarine meltwater from glaciers and icebergs in August. The methods and results highlight important components of fjord budgets, particularly the storage and barotropic terms, that have been not been appropriately considered in previous estimates of submarine melting.

Description: The data collection and analysis was funded by NSF Grants ARC-0909373, OCE-113008, and OCE-1434041.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 2645-2662, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0191.1.

Description: The occurrence, drivers, and implications of small-scale O(2–5) km diameter coherent vortices, referred to as submesoscale eddies, over the inner shelf south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, are examined using high-frequency (HF), radar-based, high-resolution (400 m) observations of surface currents. Within the 300 km2 study area, eddies occurred at rates of 1 and 4 day−1 in winter and summer, respectively. Most were less than 5 h in duration, smaller than 4 km in diameter, and rotated less than once over their lifespan; 60% of the eddies formed along the eastern edge of study area, adjacent to Wasque Shoal, and moved westward into the interior, often with relative vorticity greater than f. Eddy generation was linked to vortex stretching on the ebb and flood tide as well as the interaction of the spatially variable tide and the wind-driven currents; however, these features had complex patterns of surface divergence and stretching. Eddies located away from Wasque Shoal were related to the movement of wind-driven surface currents, as wind direction controlled where eddies formed as well as density effects. Using an analysis of particles advected within the radar-based surface currents, the observed eddies were found to be generally leaky, losing 60%–80% of particles over their lifespan, but still more retentive than the background flow. As a result, the combined translation and rotational effects of the observed eddies were an important source of lateral exchange for surface waters over the inner shelf.

Description: The HF radar data utilized here were obtained using internal funding from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The analysis was supported by NSF OCE Grant 1332646.

Description: 2017-02-19

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 361–367, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0171.1.

Description: Idealized laboratory experiments investigate the glacier–ocean boundary dynamics near a vertical glacier in a two-layer stratified fluid. Discharge of meltwater runoff at the base of the glacier (subglacial discharge) enhances submarine melting. In the laboratory, the effect of multiple sources of subglacial discharge is simulated by introducing freshwater at freezing temperature from two point sources at the base of an ice block representing the glacier. The buoyant plumes of cold meltwater and subglacial discharge water entrain warm ambient water, rise vertically, and interact within a layer of depth H2 if the distance between the sources x0 is smaller than H2α/0.35, where α is the entrainment constant. The plume water detaches from the glacier face at the interface between the two layers and/or at the free surface, as confirmed by previous numerical studies and field observations. A plume model is used to explain the observed nonmonotonic dependence of submarine melting on the sources’ separation. The distance between the two sources influences the entrainment of warm water in the plumes and consequently the amount of submarine melting and the final location of the meltwater within the water column. Two interacting plumes located very close together are observed to melt approximately half as much as two independent plumes. The inclusion, or parameterization, of the dynamics regulating multiple plumes’ interaction is therefore necessary for a correct estimate of submarine melting. Hence, the distribution and number of sources of subglacial discharge may play an important role in glacial melt rates and fjord stratification and circulation.

Description: Support to C.C. was given by the NSF Project OCE-1130008 and OCE-1434041. V.M.G. received support from the “Gori” Fellowship.

Description: 2016-07-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 327–348, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0112.1.

Description: Potential vorticity structure in two segments of the North Atlantic’s western boundary current is examined using concurrent, high-resolution measurements of hydrography and velocity from gliders. Spray gliders occupied 40 transects across the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico and 11 transects across the Gulf Stream downstream of Cape Hatteras. Cross-stream distributions of the Ertel potential vorticity and its components are calculated for each transect under the assumptions that all flow is in the direction of measured vertically averaged currents and that the flow is geostrophic. Mean cross-stream distributions of hydrographic properties, potential vorticity, and alongstream velocity are calculated for both the Loop Current and the detached Gulf Stream in both depth and density coordinates. Differences between these mean transects highlight the downstream changes in western boundary current structure. As the current increases its transport downstream, upper-layer potential vorticity is generally reduced because of the combined effects of increased anticyclonic relative vorticity, reduced stratification, and increased cross-stream density gradients. The only exception is within the 20-km-wide cyclonic flank of the Gulf Stream, where intense cyclonic relative vorticity results in more positive potential vorticity than in the Loop Current. Cross-stream gradients of mean potential vorticity satisfy necessary conditions for both barotropic and baroclinic instability within the western boundary current. Instances of very low or negative potential vorticity, which predispose the flow to various overturning instabilities, are observed in individual transects across both the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream.

Description: Glider operations in the Gulf Stream were supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE-0220769. Glider operations in the Gulf of Mexico were supported by BP. R.E.T. was supported by the Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists and the Independent Research and Development Program at WHOI.

Description: 2016-07-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 1705-1716, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0221.1.

Description: A rapid and broadband (1 h, 1 〈 f 〈 400 Hz) increase in pressure and vertical velocity on the deep ocean floor was observed on seven instruments comprising a 20-km array in the northeastern subtropical Pacific. The authors associate the jump with the passage of a cold front and focus on the 4- and 400-Hz spectra. At every station, the time of the jump is consistent with the front coming from the northwest. The apparent rate of progress, 10–20 km h−1 (2.8–5.6 m s−1), agrees with meteorological observations. The acoustic radiation below the front is modeled as arising from a moving half-plane of uncorrelated acoustic dipoles. The half-plane is preceded by a 10-km transition zone, over which the radiator strength increases linearly from zero. With this model, the time derivative of the jump at a station yields a second and independent estimate of the front’s speed, 8.5 km h−1 (2.4 m s−1). For the 4-Hz spectra, the source physics is taken to be Longuet-Higgins radiation. Its strength depends on the quantity , where Fζ is the wave amplitude power spectrum and I the overlap integral. Thus, the 1-h time constant observed in the bottom data implies a similar time constant for the growth of the wave field quantity behind the front. The spectra at 400 Hz have a similar time constant, but the jump occurs 25 min later. The implications of this difference for the source physics are uncertain.

Description: The OBSANP cruise was funded by the Office of Naval Research under Grants N00014-10-1-0987, N00014-14-1-0324, N00014-10-1-0510, and N00014-10-1-0990.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 33 (2016): 839-846, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-15-0221.1.

Description: During the Shallow Water Acoustic Experiment 2006 (SW06) conducted on the New Jersey continental shelf in the summer of 2006, detailed measurements of the ocean environment were made along a fixed reference track that was parallel to the continental shelf. The time-varying environment induced by nonlinear internal waves (NLIWs) was recorded by an array of moored thermistor chains and by X-band radars from the attending research vessels. Using a mapping technique, the three-dimensional (3D) temperature field for over a month of NLIW events is reconstructed and analyzed to provide a statistical summary of important NLIW parameters, such as the NLIW propagation speed, direction, and amplitude. The results in this paper can be used as a database for studying the NLIW generation, propagation, and fidelity of nonlinear internal wave models.

Description: This research was supported by the Office of Naval Research Ocean Acoustics Program (322OA) through Grants N00014-10-1-0396 and N00014-11-1-0701.

Description: 2016-10-18

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 29 (2016): 3647-3660, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0626.1.

Description: An assessment is made of the mean and variability of the net air–sea heat flux, Qnet, from four products (ECCO, OAFlux–CERES, ERA-Interim, and NCEP1) over the global ice-free ocean from January 2001 to December 2010. For the 10-yr “hiatus” period, all products agree on an overall net heat gain over the global ice-free ocean, but the magnitude varies from 1.7 to 9.5 W m−2. The differences among products are particularly large in the Southern Ocean, where they cannot even agree on whether the region gains or loses heat on the annual mean basis. Decadal trends of Qnet differ significantly between products. ECCO and OAFlux–CERES show almost no trend, whereas ERA-Interim suggests a downward trend and NCEP1 shows an upward trend. Therefore, numerical simulations utilizing different surface flux forcing products will likely produce diverged trends of the ocean heat content during this period. The downward trend in ERA-Interim started from 2006, driven by a peculiar pattern change in the tropical regions. ECCO, which used ERA-Interim as initial surface forcings and is constrained by ocean dynamics and ocean observations, corrected the pattern. Among the four products, ECCO and OAFlux–CERES show great similarities in the examined spatial and temporal patterns. Given that the two estimates were obtained using different approaches and based on largely independent observations, these similarities are encouraging and instructive. It is more likely that the global net air–sea heat flux does not change much during the so-called hiatus period.

Description: This paper is funded in part by the NOAA Climate Observation Division, Climate Program Office, under Grant NA09OAR4320129 and by the NOAA MAPP Climate Reanalysis Task Force Team under Grant NA13OAR4310106. The study was initiated when X. Liang was a postdoc at MIT, where he was supported in part by the NSF through Grant OCE-0961713, by NOAA through Grant NA10OAR4310135, and by the NASA Physical Oceanography Program through ECCO.

Description: 2016-11-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 2201-2218, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0020.1.

Description: This paper aims to test the validity, utility, and limitations of the lateral eddy diffusivity concept in a coastal environment through analyzing data from coupled drifter and dye releases within the footprint of a high-resolution (800 m) high-frequency radar south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Specifically, this study investigates how well a combination of radar-based velocities and drifter-derived diffusivities can reproduce observed dye spreading over an 8-h time interval. A drifter-based estimate of an anisotropic diffusivity tensor is used to parameterize small-scale motions that are unresolved and underresolved by the radar system. This leads to a significant improvement in the ability of the radar to reproduce the observed dye spreading.

Description: IR, AK, and SL were supported by the NSF OCE Grant 1332646. IR was also supported by NASA Grant NNX14AH29G.

Description: 2016-12-29

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 2267–2268, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0057.1.

Description: The original article that was the subject of this comment/reply can be found at http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JPO-D-15-0061.1.

Description: 2017-01-12

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3415-3427, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0035.1.

Description: The behavior of an axisymmetric vertical turbulent jet in an unconfined stratified environment is studied by means of well-resolved, large-eddy simulations. The stratification is two uniform layers separated by a thermocline. This study considers two cases: when the thermocline thickness is small and on the order of the jet diameter at the thermocline entrance. The Froude number of the jet at the thermocline varies from 0.6 to 1.9, corresponding to the class of weak fountains. The mean jet penetration, stratified turbulent entrainment, jet oscillations, and the generation of internal waves are examined. The mean jet penetration is predicted well by a simple model based on the conservation of the source energy in the thermocline. The entrainment coefficient for the thin thermocline is consistent with the theoretical model for a two-layer stratification with a sharp interface, while for the thick thermocline entrainment is larger at low Froude numbers. The data reveal the presence of a secondary horizontal flow in the upper part of the thick thermocline, resulting in the entrainment of fluid from the thermocline rather than from the upper stratification layer. The spectra of the jet oscillations in the thermocline display two peaks, at the same frequencies for both stratifications at fixed Froude number. For the thick thermocline, internal waves are generated only at the lower frequency, since the higher peak exceeds the maximal buoyancy frequency. For the thin thermocline, conversely, the spectra of the internal waves show the two peaks at low Froude numbers, whereas only one peak at the lower frequency is observed at higher Froude numbers.

Description: This work was supported by the Linné FLOW Centre at KTH (E. E.), the European Research Council Grant ERC-2013-CoG-616186, TRITOS (L. B.), and the Swedish Research Council (VR), Outstanding Young Researcher Award (L. B.). Support to C. C. was given by the NSF Project OCE-1434041.

Description: 2017-05-10

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 23–39, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0075.1.

Description: The mechanism responsible for the annual cycle of the flow through the straits of the Japan Sea is investigated using a two-layer model. Observations show maximum throughflow from summer to fall and minimum in winter, occurring synchronously at the three major straits: Tsushima, Tsugaru, and Soya Straits. This study finds the subpolar winds located to the north of Japan as the leading forcing agent, which first affects the Soya Strait rather than the Tsushima or Tsugaru Straits. The subpolar winds generate baroclinic Kelvin waves along the coastlines of the subpolar gyre, affect the sea surface height at the Soya Strait, and modify the flow through the strait. This causes barotropic adjustment to occur inside the Japan Sea and thus affect the flow at the Tsugaru and Tsushima Straits almost synchronously. The barotropic adjustment mechanism explains well why the observations show a similar annual cycle at the three straits. The annual cycle at the Tsugaru Strait is further shown to be weaker than that in the other two straits based on frictional balance around islands, that is, frictional stresses exerted around an island integrate to zero. In the Tsugaru Strait, the flows induced by the frictional integrals around the northern (Hokkaido) and southern (Honshu) islands are in opposite directions and tend to cancel out. Frictional balance also suggests that the annual cycle at the Tsugaru Strait is likely in phase with that at the Soya Strait because the length scale of the northern island is much shorter than that of the southern island.

Description: S. Kida is supported by KAKENHI (22106002). B. Qiu is supported by NASA (NNX13AE15G). J. Yang is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. X. Lin is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (41222037 and U1406401), China’s National Basic Research Priorities Programme (2013CB956202), and the Global Air-Sea Interaction Project (GASI-03-01-01-02).

Description: 2016-07-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 107–124, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0082.1.

Description: By taking into account the contributions of both locally and remotely generated internal tides, the tidal mixing in the Luzon Strait (LS) and the South China Sea (SCS) is investigated through internal-tide simulation and energetics analysis. A three-dimensional nonhydrostatic high-resolution model driven by four primary tidal constituents (M2, S2, K1, and O1) is used for the internal-tide simulation. The baroclinic energy budget analysis reveals that the internal tides radiated from the LS are the dominant energy source for the tidal dissipation in the SCS. In the LS, the estimated depth-integrated turbulent kinetic energy dissipation exceeds O(1) W m−2 atop the two subsurface ridges, with a dissipation rate of 〉O(10−7) W kg−1 and diapycnal diffusivity of ~O(10−2) m2 s−1. In the SCS, the most intense turbulence occurs in the deep-water basin with a dissipation rate of O(10−8–10−6) W kg−1 and diapycnal diffusivity of O(10−3–10−1) m2 s−1 within the ~2000-m water column above the seafloor as well as in the shelfbreak region with a dissipation rate of O(10−7–10−6) W kg−1 and diapycnal diffusivity of O(10−4–10−3) m2 s−1. These estimated values are consistent with observations reported in previous studies and are at least one order of magnitude larger than those based solely on locally generated internal tides.

Description: This work is jointly supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA11010304, XDA11010204), the MOST of China (2014CB953904), the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SQ201305), and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41376021, 41306013). ZL’s participation of this work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41476006), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (2015J06010), and the National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB417402).

Description: 2016-07-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 233–254, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0025.1.

Description: The relative roles of isoneutral stirring by mesoscale eddies and dianeutral stirring by small-scale turbulence in setting the large-scale temperature–salinity relation of the Southern Ocean against the action of the overturning circulation are assessed by analyzing a set of shear and temperature microstructure measurements across Drake Passage in a “triple decomposition” framework. It is shown that a picture of mixing and overturning across a region of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) may be constructed from a relatively modest number of microstructure profiles. The rates of isoneutral and dianeutral stirring are found to exhibit distinct, characteristic, and abrupt variations: most notably, a one to two orders of magnitude suppression of isoneutral stirring in the upper kilometer of the ACC frontal jets and an order of magnitude intensification of dianeutral stirring in the subpycnocline and deepest layers of the ACC. These variations balance an overturning circulation with meridional flows of O(1) mm s−1 across the ACC’s mean thermohaline structure. Isoneutral and dianeutral stirring play complementary roles in balancing the overturning, with isoneutral processes dominating in intermediate waters and the Upper Circumpolar Deep Water and dianeutral processes prevailing in lighter and denser layers.

Description: The DIMES experiment was funded by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). ACNG acknowledges the support of a Philip Leverhulme Prize, the Royal Society, and the Wolfson Foundation. JDZ acknowledges the support of a NERC Research Fellowship.

Description: 2016-07-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3155-3163, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0123.1.

Description: Idealized laboratory experiments have been conducted in a two-layer stratified fluid to investigate the leading-order dynamics that control submarine melting and meltwater export near a vertical ice–ocean interface as a function of subglacial discharge. In summer, the discharge of surface runoff at the base of a glacier (subglacial discharge) generates strong buoyant plumes that rise along the glacier front entraining ambient water along the way. The entrainment enhances the heat transport toward the glacier front and hence the submarine melt rate increases with the subglacial discharge rate. In the laboratory, the effect of subglacial discharge is simulated by introducing freshwater at freezing temperature from a point source at the base of an ice block representing the glacier. The circulation pattern observed both with and without subglacial discharge resembles those observed in previous observational and numerical studies. Buoyant plumes rise vertically until they find either their neutrally buoyant level or the free surface. Hence, the meltwater can deposit within the interior of the water column and not entirely at the free surface, as confirmed by field observations. The heat budget in the tank, calculated following a new framework, gives estimates of submarine melt rate that increase with the subglacial discharge and are in agreement with the directly measured submarine melting. This laboratory study provides the first direct measurements of submarine melt rates for different subglacial discharges, and the results are consistent with the predictions of previous theoretical and numerical studies.

Description: Support to C. C. was given by the NSF project OCE- 1130008 and OCE-1434041. M. G. received support from the ‘‘Gori’’ Fellowship.

Description: 2017-04-07

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 97 (2016): 1391-1407, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00032.1.

Description: Remote sensing of salinity using satellite-mounted microwave radiometers provides new perspectives for studying ocean dynamics and the global hydrological cycle. Calibration and validation of these measurements is challenging because satellite and in situ methods measure salinity differently. Microwave radiometers measure the salinity in the top few centimeters of the ocean, whereas most in situ observations are reported below a depth of a few meters. Additionally, satellites measure salinity as a spatial average over an area of about 100 × 100 km2. In contrast, in situ sensors provide pointwise measurements at the location of the sensor. Thus, the presence of vertical gradients in, and horizontal variability of, sea surface salinity complicates comparison of satellite and in situ measurements. This paper synthesizes present knowledge of the magnitude and the processes that contribute to the formation and evolution of vertical and horizontal variability in near-surface salinity. Rainfall, freshwater plumes, and evaporation can generate vertical gradients of salinity, and in some cases these gradients can be large enough to affect validation of satellite measurements. Similarly, mesoscale to submesoscale processes can lead to horizontal variability that can also affect comparisons of satellite data to in situ data. Comparisons between satellite and in situ salinity measurements must take into account both vertical stratification and horizontal variability.

Description: 2017-02-28

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 29 (2016): 6201-6221, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0694.1.

Description: Anomalous conditions in the tropical oceans, such as those related to El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean dipole, have been previously blamed for extended droughts and wet periods in Australia. Yet the extent to which Australian wet and dry spells can be driven by internal atmospheric variability remains unclear. Natural variability experiments are examined to determine whether prolonged extreme wet and dry periods can arise from internal atmospheric and land variability alone. Results reveal that this is indeed the case; however, these dry and wet events are found to be less severe than in simulations incorporating coupled oceanic variability. Overall, ocean feedback processes increase the magnitude of Australian rainfall variability by about 30% and give rise to more spatially coherent rainfall impacts. Over mainland Australia, ocean interactions lead to more frequent extreme events, particularly during the rainy season. Over Tasmania, in contrast, ocean–atmosphere coupling increases mean rainfall throughout the year. While ocean variability makes Australian rainfall anomalies more severe, droughts and wet spells of duration longer than three years are equally likely to occur in both atmospheric- and ocean-driven simulations. Moreover, they are essentially indistinguishable from what one expects from a Gaussian white noise distribution. Internal atmosphere–land-driven megadroughts and megapluvials that last as long as ocean-driven events are also identified in the simulations. This suggests that oceanic variability may be less important than previously assumed for the long-term persistence of Australian rainfall anomalies. This poses a challenge to accurate prediction of long-term dry and wet spells for Australia.

Description: This study was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) under ARC-DP1094784, ARC-DP-150101331, ARC-FL100100214, and funding for C.C.U. from the National Science Foundation under AGS-1602455 and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.

Description: 2017-02-19

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3263-3278, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0091.1.

Description: The halocline of the Beaufort Gyre varies significantly on interannual to decadal time scales, affecting the freshwater content (FWC) of the Arctic Ocean. This study explores the role of eddies in the Ekman-driven gyre variability. Following the transformed Eulerian-mean paradigm, the authors develop a theory that links the FWC variability to the stability of the large-scale gyre, defined as the inverse of its equilibration time. The theory, verified with eddy-resolving numerical simulations, demonstrates that the gyre stability is explicitly controlled by the mesoscale eddy diffusivity. An accurate representation of the halocline dynamics requires the eddy diffusivity of 300 ± 200 m2 s−1, which is lower than what is used in most low-resolution climate models. In particular, on interannual and longer time scales the eddy fluxes and the Ekman pumping provide equally important contributions to the FWC variability. However, only large-scale Ekman pumping patterns can significantly alter the FWC, with spatially localized perturbations being an order of magnitude less efficient. Lastly, the authors introduce a novel FWC tendency diagnostic—the Gyre Index—that can be conveniently calculated using observations located only along the gyre boundaries. Its strong predictive capabilities, assessed in the eddy-resolving model forced by stochastic winds, suggest that the Gyre Index would be of use in interpreting FWC evolution in observations as well as in numerical models.

Description: GEMacknowledges the support from theHowland Postdoctoral Program Fund at WHOI and the Stanback Fellowship Fund at Caltech.MAS was supported by NSF Grants PLR-1415489 and OCE-1232389. AFT acknowledges support from NASA Award NNN12AA01C.

Description: 2017-04-20

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Monthly Weather Review 147(1), (2019): 389-406. doi: 10.1175/MWR-D-18-0158.1.

Description: The quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) is stratified by stratospheric zonal wind direction and height into four phase pairs [easterly midstratospheric winds (QBOEM), easterly lower-stratospheric winds, westerly midstratospheric winds (QBOWM), and westerly lower-stratospheric winds] using an empirical orthogonal function analysis of daily stratospheric (100–10 hPa) zonal wind data during 1980–2017. Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) events in which the MJO convective envelope moved eastward across the Maritime Continent (MC) during 1980–2017 are identified using the Real-time Multivariate MJO (RMM) index and the outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) MJO index (OMI). Comparison of RMM amplitudes by the QBO phase pair over the MC (RMM phases 4 and 5) reveals that boreal winter MJO events have the strongest amplitudes during QBOEM and the weakest amplitudes during QBOWM, which is consistent with QBO-driven differences in upper-tropospheric lower-stratospheric (UTLS) static stability. Additionally, boreal winter RMM events over the MC strengthen during QBOEM and weaken during QBOWM. In the OMI, those amplitude changes generally shift eastward to the eastern MC and western Pacific Ocean, which may result from differences in RMM and OMI index methodologies. During boreal summer, as the northeastward-propagating boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO) becomes the dominant mode of intraseasonal variability, these relationships are reversed. Zonal differences in UTLS stability anomalies are consistent with amplitude changes of eastward-propagating MJO events across the MC during boreal winter, and meridional stability differences are consistent with amplitude changes of northeastward-propagating BSISO events during boreal summer. Results remain consistent when stratifying by neutral ENSO phase.

Description: The authors are grateful for the funding provided by the Office of Naval Research Propagation of Intra-Seasonal Tropical Oscillations (ONR PISTON) Award N0001416WX01752 and the USNA Trident Scholar program. The authors also appreciate the helpful comments of the two external reviewers.

Description: 2019-07-07

Description: The ozonesonde is a small balloon-borne instrument that is attached to a standard radiosonde to measure profiles of ozone from the surface to 35 km with ∼100-m vertical resolution. Ozonesonde data constitute a mainstay of satellite calibration and are used for climatologies and analysis of trends, especially in the lower stratosphere where satellites are most uncertain. The electrochemical concentration cell (ECC) ozonesonde has been deployed at ∼100 stations worldwide since the 1960s, with changes over time in manufacture and procedures, including details of the cell chemical solution and data processing. As a consequence, there are biases among different stations and discontinuities in profile time series from individual site records. For 22 years the Jülich (Germany) Ozonesonde Intercomparison Experiment (JOSIE) has periodically tested ozonesondes in a simulation chamber designated the World Calibration Centre for Ozonesondes (WCCOS) by WMO. During October–November 2017 a JOSIE campaign evaluated the sondes and procedures used in Southern Hemisphere Additional Ozonesondes (SHADOZ), a 14-station sonde network operating in the tropics and subtropics. A distinctive feature of the 2017 JOSIE was that the tests were conducted by operators from eight SHADOZ stations. Experimental protocols for the SHADOZ sonde configurations, which represent most of those in use today, are described, along with preliminary results. SHADOZ stations that follow WMO-recommended protocols record total ozone within 3% of the JOSIE reference instrument. These results and prior JOSIEs demonstrate that regular testing is essential to maintain best practices in ozonesonde operations and to ensure high-quality data for the satellite and ozone assessment communities.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 551-568, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0047.1.

Description: There exists a good deal of indirect evidence, from several locations around the world, that there is a substantial eddy field over continental shelves. These eddies appear to have typical swirl velocities of a few centimeters per second and have horizontal scales of perhaps 5–10 km. These eddies are weak compared to typical, wind-driven, alongshore flows but often seem to dominate middepth cross-shelf flows. The idea that motivates the present contribution is that the alongshore wind stress ultimately energizes these eddies by means of baroclinic instabilities, even in cases where obvious intense fronts do not exist. The proposed sequence is that alongshore winds over a stratified ocean cause upwelling or downwelling, and the resulting horizontal density gradients are strong enough to fuel baroclinic instabilities of the requisite energy levels. This idea is explored here by means of a sequence of idealized primitive equation numerical model studies, each driven by a modest, nearly steady, alongshore wind stress applied for about 5–10 days. Different runs vary wind forcing, stratification, bottom slope, bottom friction, and Coriolis parameter. All runs, both upwelling and downwelling, are found to be baroclinically unstable and to have scales compatible with the underlying hypothesis. The model results, combined with physically based scalings, show that eddy kinetic energy generally increases with bottom slope, stratification, wind impulse (time integral of the wind stress), and inverse Coriolis parameter. The dominant length scale of the eddies is found to increase with increasing eddy kinetic energy and to decrease with Coriolis parameter.

Description: This work was supported by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and by the National Science Foundation, Physical Oceanography section through Grant OCE-1433953.

Description: 2016-06-09

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 1309-1321, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0068.1.

Description: Direct measurements of oceanic turbulent parameters were taken upstream of and across Drake Passage, in the region of the Subantarctic and Polar Fronts. Values of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate ε estimated by microstructure are up to two orders of magnitude lower than previously published estimates in the upper 1000 m. Turbulence levels in Drake Passage are systematically higher than values upstream, regardless of season. The dissipation of thermal variance χ is enhanced at middepth throughout the surveys, with the highest values found in northern Drake Passage, where water mass variability is the most pronounced. Using the density ratio, evidence for double-diffusive instability is presented. Subject to double-diffusive physics, the estimates of diffusivity using the Osborn–Cox method are larger than ensemble statistics based on ε and the buoyancy frequency.

Description: This work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Description: 2016-10-05

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 439-459, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0086.1.

Description: The summertime California Current System (CCS) is characterized by energetic mesoscale eddies, whose sea surface temperature (SST) and surface current can significantly modify the wind stress and Ekman pumping. Relative importance of the eddy–wind interactions via SST and surface current in the CCS is examined using a high-resolution (7 km) regional coupled model with a novel coupling approach to isolate the small-scale air–sea coupling by SST and surface current. Results show that when the eddy-induced surface current is allowed to modify the wind stress, the spatially averaged surface eddy kinetic energy (EKE) is reduced by 42%, and this is primarily due to enhanced surface eddy drag and reduced wind energy transfer. In contrast, the eddy-induced SST–wind coupling has no significant impact on the EKE. Furthermore, eddy-induced SST and surface current modify the Ekman pumping via their crosswind SST gradient and surface vorticity gradient, respectively. The resultant magnitudes of the Ekman pumping velocity are comparable, but the implied feedback effects on the eddy statistics are different. The surface current-induced Ekman pumping mainly attenuates the amplitude of cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies, acting to reduce the eddy activity, while the SST-induced Ekman pumping primarily affects the propagation. Time mean–rectified change in SST is determined by the altered offshore temperature advection by the mean and eddy currents, but the magnitude of the mean SST change is greater with the eddy-induced current effect. The demonstrated remarkably strong dynamical response in the CCS system to the eddy-induced current–wind coupling indicates that eddy-induced current should play an important role in the regional coupled ocean–atmosphere system.

Description: We thank NSF for support under GrantsOCE-0960770,OCE-1419235, andOCE-1419306. HS is grateful for the WHOI internal support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Awards for Innovative Research and the additional support from the ONR We thank NSF for support under GrantsOCE-0960770,OCE-1419235, andOCE-1419306. HS is grateful for the WHOI internal support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Awards for Innovative Research and the additional support from the ONR

Description: 2016-05-30

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 1769-1783, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0193.1.

Description: High-resolution observations of velocity, salinity, and turbulence quantities were collected in a salt wedge estuary to quantify the efficiency of stratified mixing in a high-energy environment. During the ebb tide, a midwater column layer of strong shear and stratification developed, exhibiting near-critical gradient Richardson numbers and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation rates greater than 10−4 m2 s−3, based on inertial subrange spectra. Collocated estimates of scalar variance dissipation from microconductivity sensors were used to estimate buoyancy flux and the flux Richardson number Rif. The majority of the samples were outside the boundary layer, based on the ratio of Ozmidov and boundary length scales, and had a mean Rif = 0.23 ± 0.01 (dissipation flux coefficient Γ = 0.30 ± 0.02) and a median gradient Richardson number Rig = 0.25. The boundary-influenced subset of the data had decreased efficiency, with Rif = 0.17 ± 0.02 (Γ = 0.20 ± 0.03) and median Rig = 0.16. The relationship between Rif and Rig was consistent with a turbulent Prandtl number of 1. Acoustic backscatter imagery revealed coherent braids in the mixing layer during the early ebb and a transition to more homogeneous turbulence in the midebb. A temporal trend in efficiency was also visible, with higher efficiency in the early ebb and lower efficiency in the late ebb when the bottom boundary layer had greater influence on the flow. These findings show that mixing efficiency of turbulence in a continuously forced, energetic, free shear layer can be significantly greater than the broadly cited upper bound from Osborn of 0.15–0.17.

Description: Holleman was supported by the Devonshire Scholars program. The field study and the coauthors’ contributions were supported by NSF Grant OCE 0926427.

Description: 2016-11-24

Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 33 (2016): 873-890, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-15-0109.1.

Description: Direct covariance flux (DCF) measurements taken from floating platforms are contaminated by wave-induced platform motions that need to be removed before computation of the turbulent fluxes. Several correction algorithms have been developed and successfully applied in earlier studies from research vessels and, most recently, by the use of moored buoys. The validation of those correction algorithms has so far been limited to short-duration comparisons against other floating platforms. Although these comparisons show in general a good agreement, there is still a lack of a rigorous validation of the method, required to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the existing motion-correction algorithms. This paper attempts to provide such a validation by a comparison of flux estimates from two DCF systems, one mounted on a moored buoy and one on the Air–Sea Interaction Tower (ASIT) at the Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory, Massachusetts. The ASIT was specifically designed to minimize flow distortion over a wide range of wind directions from the open ocean for flux measurements. The flow measurements from the buoy system are corrected for wave-induced platform motions before computation of the turbulent heat and momentum fluxes. Flux estimates and cospectra of the corrected buoy data are found to be in very good agreement with those obtained from the ASIT. The comparison is also used to optimize the filter constants used in the motion-correction algorithm. The quantitative agreement between the buoy data and the ASIT demonstrates that the DCF method is applicable for turbulence measurements from small moving platforms, such as buoys.

Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation Grant OCE04-24536 as part of the CLIVAR Mode Water Dynamic Experiment (CLIMODE).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(7), (2019): 1889-1904, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0053.1.

Description: A high-resolution numerical model, together with in situ and satellite observations, is used to explore the nature and dynamics of the dominant high-frequency (from one day to one week) variability in Denmark Strait. Mooring measurements in the center of the strait reveal that warm water “flooding events” occur, whereby the North Icelandic Irminger Current (NIIC) propagates offshore and advects subtropical-origin water northward through the deepest part of the sill. Two other types of mesoscale processes in Denmark Strait have been described previously in the literature, known as “boluses” and “pulses,” associated with a raising and lowering of the overflow water interface. Our measurements reveal that flooding events occur in conjunction with especially pronounced pulses. The model indicates that the NIIC hydrographic front is maintained by a balance between frontogenesis by the large-scale flow and frontolysis by baroclinic instability. Specifically, the temperature and salinity tendency equations demonstrate that the eddies act to relax the front, while the mean flow acts to sharpen it. Furthermore, the model reveals that the two dense water processes—boluses and pulses (and hence flooding events)—are dynamically related to each other and tied to the meandering of the hydrographic front in the strait. Our study thus provides a general framework for interpreting the short-time-scale variability of Denmark Strait Overflow Water entering the Irminger Sea.

Description: MAS was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grants OCE-1558742 and OCE-1534618. RSP, PL, and DM were supported by NSF under Grants OCE-1558742 and OCE-1259618. WJvA was supported by the Helmholtz Infrastructure Initiative FRAM. TWNH and MA were supported by NSF under Grants OCE-1633124 and OCE-118123.

Description: 2020-07-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. 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 Marine Science and Engineering 6(4), (2018): 144. doi:10.3390/jmse6040144.

Description: Geochronologies derived from sediment cores in coastal locations are often used to infer event bed characteristics such as deposit thicknesses and accumulation rates. Such studies commonly use naturally occurring, short-lived radioisotopes, such as Beryllium-7 (7Be) and Thorium-234 (234Th), to study depositional and post-depositional processes. These radioisotope activities, however, are not generally represented in sediment transport models that characterize coastal flood and storm deposition with grain size patterns and deposit thicknesses. We modified the Community Sediment Transport Modeling System (CSTMS) to account for reactive tracers and used this capability to represent the behavior of these short-lived radioisotopes on the sediment bed. This paper describes the model and presents results from a set of idealized, one-dimensional (vertical) test cases. The model configuration represented fluvial deposition followed by periods of episodic storm resuspension. Sensitivity tests explored the influence on seabed radioisotope profiles by the intensities of bioturbation and wave resuspension and the thickness of fluvial deposits. The intensity of biodiffusion affected the persistence of fluvial event beds as evidenced by 7Be. Both resuspension and biodiffusion increased the modeled seabed inventory of 234Th. A thick fluvial deposit increased the seabed inventory of 7Be and 234Th but mixing over time greatly reduced the difference in inventory of 234Th in fluvial deposits of different thicknesses.

Description: The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) provided funding for Birchler, Harris, and Kniskern. During his M.S. program Birchler received additional funds from VIMS’ Office of Academic Studies. This work was partially supported by the U.S. Geological Survey, Coastal and Marine Geology Program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 32(2), (2019): 549-573. doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0413.1.

Description: Time series of surface meteorology and air–sea fluxes from the northern Bay of Bengal are analyzed, quantifying annual and seasonal means, variability, and the potential for surface fluxes to contribute significantly to variability in surface temperature and salinity. Strong signals were associated with solar insolation and its modulation by cloud cover, and, in the 5- to 50-day range, with intraseasonal oscillations (ISOs). The northeast (NE) monsoon (DJF) was typically cloud free, with strong latent heat loss and several moderate wind events, and had the only seasonal mean ocean heat loss. The spring intermonsoon (MAM) was cloud free and had light winds and the strongest ocean heating. Strong ISOs and Tropical Cyclone Komen were seen in the southwest (SW) monsoon (JJA), when 65% of the 2.2-m total rain fell, and oceanic mean heating was small. The fall intermonsoon (SON) initially had moderate convective systems and mean ocean heating, with a transition to drier winds and mean ocean heat loss in the last month. Observed surface freshwater flux applied to a layer of the observed thickness produced drops in salinity with timing and magnitude similar to the initial drops in salinity in the summer monsoon, but did not reproduce the salinity variability of the fall intermonsoon. Observed surface heat flux has the potential to cause the temperature trends of the different seasons, but uncertainty in how shortwave radiation is absorbed in the upper ocean limits quantifying the role of surface forcing in the evolution of mixed layer temperature.

Description: The deployment of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) mooring and RW and JTF were supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-1-0453. DS acknowledges support from the Ministry of Earth Sciences under India’s National Monsoon Mission. HS acknowledges support from the Office of Naval Research Grants N00014-13-1-0453 and N00014-17-12398. The deployment of the WHOI mooring was done by RV Sagar Nidhi and the recovery by RV Sagar Kanya; the help of the crew and science parties is gratefully acknowledged as is the ongoing support at NIOT in Chennai and by other colleagues in India of this mooring work. The work of the staff of the WHOI Upper Ocean Process Group in the design, building, deployment, and recovery of the mooring and in processing the data is gratefully acknowledged. The software for the wavelet analysis was provided by Torrence and Compo (1998). Feedback on the paper by Dr. Amit Tandon and two anonymous reviewers is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is dedicated to Dr. Frank Bradley.

Description: 2019-06-28

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography, 49 (2), (2019): 607-630, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0166.1.

Description: The Lagrangian motion in the eddy field produced from an unstable retrograde jet along the shelf break is studied from idealized numerical experiments with a primitive equation model. The jet is initially in thermal wind balance with a cross-isobath density gradient and is not subjected to any atmospheric forcing. Over the course of the model integration, the jet becomes unstable and produces a quasi-stationary eddy field over a 2-month period. During this period, the cross-slope flow at the shelf break is characterized by along-slope correlation scales of O(10) km and temporal correlation scales of a few days. The relative dispersion of parcels across isobaths is found to increase with time as tb, where 1 〈 b 〈 2. This mixed diffusive–ballistic regime appears to reflect the combined effects of (i) the short length scales of velocity correlation at the shelf break and (ii) the seaward excursion of monopolar and dipolar vortices. Cross-slope dispersion is greater offshore of the front than inshore of the front, as offshore parcels are both subducted onshore below density surfaces and translated offshore with eddies. Nonetheless, the exchange of parcels across the jet remains very limited on the monthly time scale. Particles originating from the bottom experience upward displacements of a few tens of meters and seaward displacements of O(100) km, suggesting that the eddy activity engendered by an unstable along-slope jet provides another mechanism for bottom boundary layer detachment near the shelf edge.

Description: The author expresses his gratitude to the researchers who contributed to the development and public dissemination of POM [for a list of contributors, see Mellor (2002) and comments in the source code]. Discussions with Kenneth Brink, Hyodae Seo, and Weifeng Zhang have been helpful. Comments provided by Kenneth Brink on a draft are gratefully acknowledged. The criticism from two anonymous reviewers allowed us to better focus the manuscript and to significantly improve its clarity. This work has been supported by Grant OCE-1556400 from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Description: 2020-02-18

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 417-437, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0055.1.

Description: In the stratified ocean, turbulent mixing is primarily attributed to the breaking of internal waves. As such, internal waves provide a link between large-scale forcing and small-scale mixing. The internal wave field north of the Kerguelen Plateau is characterized using 914 high-resolution hydrographic profiles from novel Electromagnetic Autonomous Profiling Explorer (EM-APEX) floats. Altogether, 46 coherent features are identified in the EM-APEX velocity profiles and interpreted in terms of internal wave kinematics. The large number of internal waves analyzed provides a quantitative framework for characterizing spatial variations in the internal wave field and for resolving generation versus propagation dynamics. Internal waves observed near the Kerguelen Plateau have a mean vertical wavelength of 200 m, a mean horizontal wavelength of 15 km, a mean period of 16 h, and a mean horizontal group velocity of 3 cm s−1. The internal wave characteristics are dependent on regional dynamics, suggesting that different generation mechanisms of internal waves dominate in different dynamical zones. The wave fields in the Subantarctic/Subtropical Front and the Polar Front Zone are influenced by the local small-scale topography and flow strength. The eddy-wave field is influenced by the large-scale flow structure, while the internal wave field in the Subantarctic Zone is controlled by atmospheric forcing. More importantly, the local generation of internal waves not only drives large-scale dissipation in the frontal region but also downstream from the plateau. Some internal waves in the frontal region are advected away from the plateau, contributing to mixing and stratification budgets elsewhere.

Description: A.M. was supported by the joint CSIRO-University of Tasmania Quantitative Marine Science (QMS) program and the 2009 CSIRO Wealth from Ocean Flagship Collaborative Fund. K.L.P.’s salary support was provided by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution bridge support funds. B.M.S. was supported by the Australian Climate Change Science Program.

Description: 2016-06-07

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 569-582, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0048.1.

Description: Continental shelf baroclinic instability energized by fluctuating alongshore winds is treated using idealized primitive equation numerical model experiments. A spatially uniform alongshore wind, sinusoidal in time, alternately drives upwelling and downwelling and so creates highly variable, but slowly increasing, available potential energy. For all of the 30 model runs, conducted with a wide range of parameters (varying Coriolis parameter, initial stratification, bottom friction, forcing period, wind strength, and bottom slope), a baroclinic instability and subsequent eddy field develop. Model results and scalings show that the eddy kinetic energy increases with wind amplitude, forcing period, stratification, and bottom slope. The dominant alongshore length scale of the eddy field is essentially an internal Rossby radius of deformation. The resulting depth-averaged alongshore flow field is dominated by the large-scale, periodic wind forcing, while the cross-shelf flow field is dominated by the eddy variability. The result is that correlation length scales for alongshore flow are far greater than those for cross-shelf velocity. This scale discrepancy is qualitatively consistent with midshelf observations by Kundu and Allen, among others.

Description: This work was funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and by the National Science Foundation, Physical Oceanography section through Grant OCE-1433953.

Description: 2016-06-09

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 1277-1284, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0027.1.

Description: The contemporary Arctic Ocean differs markedly from midlatitude, ice-free, and relatively warm oceans in the context of density-compensating temperature and salinity variations. These variations are invaluable tracers in the midlatitudes, revealing essential fundamental physical processes of the oceans, on scales from millimeters to thousands of kilometers. However, in the cold Arctic Ocean, temperature variations have little effect on density, and a measure of density-compensating variations in temperature and salinity (i.e., spiciness) is not appropriate. In general, temperature is simply a passive tracer, which implies that most of the heat transported in the Arctic Ocean relies entirely on the ocean dynamics determined by the salinity field. It is shown, however, that as the Arctic Ocean warms up, temperature will take on a new role in setting dynamical balances. Under continued warming, there exists the possibility for a regime shift in the mechanisms by which heat is transported in the Arctic Ocean. This may result in a cap on the storage of deep-ocean heat, having profound implications for future predictions of Arctic sea ice.

Description: Support was provided by the National Science Foundation Division of Polar Programs Award 1350046 and Office of Naval Research Grant Number N00014-12-1-0110.

Description: 2016-10-05

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 1717-1734, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0124.1.

Description: The contribution of warm-core anticyclones shed by the Irminger Current off West Greenland, known as Irminger rings, to the restratification of the upper layers of the Labrador Sea is investigated in the 1/12° Family of Linked Atlantic Models Experiment (FLAME) model. The model output, covering the 1990–2004 period, shows strong similarities to observations of the Irminger Current as well as ring observations at a mooring located offshore of the eddy formation region in 2007–09. An analysis of fluxes in the model shows that while the majority of heat exchange with the interior indeed occurs at the site of the Irminger Current instability, the contribution of the coherent Irminger rings is modest (18%). Heat is provided to the convective region mainly through noncoherent anomalies and enhanced local mixing by the rings facilitating further exchange between the boundary and interior. The time variability of the eddy kinetic energy and the boundary to interior heat flux in the model are strongly correlated to the density gradient between the dense convective region and the more buoyant boundary current. In FLAME, the density variations of the boundary current are larger than those of the convective region, thereby largely controlling changes in lateral fluxes. Synchronous long-term trends in temperature in the boundary and the interior over the 15-yr simulation suggest that the heat flux relative to the temperature of the interior is largely steady on these time scales.

Description: The authors were supported in this work by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Monthly Weather Review 144 (2016): 877-896, doi:10.1175/MWR-D-15-0275.1.

Description: This paper describes a new model (method) called Satellite-derived North Atlantic Profiles (SNAP) that seeks to provide a high-resolution, near-real-time ocean thermal field to aid tropical cyclone (TC) forecasting. Using about 139 000 observed temperature profiles, a spatially dependent regression model is developed for the North Atlantic Ocean during hurricane season. A new step introduced in this work is that the daily mixed layer depth is derived from the output of a one-dimensional Price–Weller–Pinkel ocean mixed layer model with time-dependent surface forcing. The accuracy of SNAP is assessed by comparison to 19 076 independent Argo profiles from the hurricane seasons of 2011 and 2013. The rms differences of the SNAP-estimated isotherm depths are found to be 10–25 m for upper thermocline isotherms (29°–19°C), 35–55 m for middle isotherms (18°–7°C), and 60–100 m for lower isotherms (6°–4°C). The primary error sources include uncertainty of sea surface height anomaly (SSHA), high-frequency fluctuations of isotherm depths, salinity effects, and the barotropic component of SSHA. These account for roughly 29%, 25%, 19%, and 10% of the estimation error, respectively. The rms differences of TC-related ocean parameters, upper-ocean heat content, and averaged temperature of the upper 100 m, are ~10 kJ cm−2 and ~0.8°C, respectively, over the North Atlantic basin. These errors are typical also of the open ocean underlying the majority of TC tracks. Errors are somewhat larger over regions of greatest mesoscale variability (i.e., the Gulf Stream and the Loop Current within the Gulf of Mexico).

Description: IFP is supported by Grants NSC 101-2628-M-002-001-MY4 and MOST 103-2111-M-002 -002 -MY3. JFP and SRJ were supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research under the project “Impact of Typhoons on the North Pacific, ITOP.”

Description: 2016-06-08

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Monthly Weather Review 144 (2016): 861-875, doi:10.1175/MWR-D-14-00303.1.

Description: Particle filtering methods for data assimilation may suffer from the “curse of dimensionality,” where the required ensemble size grows rapidly as the dimension increases. It would, therefore, be useful to know a priori whether a particle filter is feasible to implement in a given system. Previous work provides an asymptotic relation between the necessary ensemble size and an exponential function of , a statistic that depends on observation-space quantities and that is related to the system dimension when the number of observations is large; for linear, Gaussian systems, the statistic can be computed from eigenvalues of an appropriately normalized covariance matrix. Tests with a low-dimensional system show that these asymptotic results remain useful when the system is nonlinear, with either the standard or optimal proposal implementation of the particle filter. This study explores approximations to the covariance matrices that facilitate computation in high-dimensional systems, as well as different methods to estimate the accumulated system noise covariance for the optimal proposal. Since may be approximated using an ensemble from a simpler data assimilation scheme, such as the ensemble Kalman filter, the asymptotic relations thus allow an estimate of the ensemble size required for a particle filter before its implementation. Finally, the improved performance of particle filters with the optimal proposal, relative to those using the standard proposal, in the same low-dimensional system is demonstrated.

Description: Slivinski was supported by the NSF through Grants DMS-0907904 and DMS-1148284, by ONR through DOD (MURI) Grant N000141110087, and by NCAR’s Advanced Study Program during a collaborative visit to NCAR.

Description: 2016-05-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 1823-1837, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0165.1.

Description: Measurements just beneath the ocean surface demonstrate that the primary mechanism by which energy from breaking waves is transmitted into the water column is through the work done by the covariance of turbulent pressure and velocity fluctuations. The convergence in the vertical transport of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) balances the dissipation rate of TKE at first order and is nearly an order of magnitude greater than the sum of the integrated Eulerian and Stokes shear production. The measured TKE transport is consistent with a simple conceptual model that assumes roughly half of the surface flux of TKE by wave breaking is transmitted to depths greater than the significant wave height. During conditions when breaking waves are inferred, the direction of momentum flux is more aligned with the direction of wave propagation than with the wind direction. Both the energy and momentum fluxes occur at frequencies much lower than the wave band, consistent with the time scales associated with wave breaking. The largest instantaneous values of momentum flux are associated with strong downward vertical velocity perturbations, in contrast to the pressure work, which is associated with strong drops in pressure and upward vertical velocity perturbations.

Description: Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1339032 and OCE-1338518

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 33 (2016): 1377-1392, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-15-0242.1.

Description: The calibration and validation of a novel approach to remotely sense surface winds using land-based high-frequency (HF) radar systems are described. Potentially available on time scales of tens of minutes and spatial scales of 2–3 km for wide swaths of the coastal ocean, HF radar–based surface wind observations would greatly aid coastal ocean planners, researchers, and operational stakeholders by providing detailed real-time estimates and climatologies of coastal winds, as well as enabling higher-quality short-term forecasts of the spatially dependent wind field. Such observations are particularly critical for the developing offshore wind energy community. An autonomous surface vehicle was deployed within the Massachusetts Wind Energy Area, located south of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, for one month, collecting wind observations that were used to test models of wind-wave spreading and HF radar energy loss, thereby empirically relating radar-measured power to surface winds. HF radar–based extractions of the remote wind speed had accuracies of 1.4 m s−1 for winds less than 7 m s−1, within the optimal range of the radar frequency used. Accuracies degraded at higher winds due to low signal-to-noise ratios in the returned power and poor resolution of the model. Pairing radar systems with a range of transmit frequencies with adjustments of the extraction model for additional power and environmental factors would resolve many of the errors observed.

Description: This analysis was supported by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. The HF radar data used were obtained during projects supported by the National Science Foundation, the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), and internal funds from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: 2016-12-24

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 2143-2156, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0213.1.

Description: Measurements of pressure near the surface in conditions of wind sea and swell are reported. Swell, or waves that overrun the wind, produces an upward flux of energy and momentum from waves to the wind and corresponding attenuation of the swell waves. The estimates of growth of wind sea are consistent with existing parameterizations. The attenuation of swell in the field is considerably smaller than existing measurements in the laboratory.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 96 (2015): 2079–2105, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00177.1.

Description: The loss of Arctic sea ice has emerged as a leading signal of global warming. This, together with acknowledged impacts on other components of the Earth system, has led to the term “the new Arctic.” Global coupled climate models predict that ice loss will continue through the twenty-first century, with implications for governance, economics, security, and global weather. A wide range in model projections reflects the complex, highly coupled interactions between the polar atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere, including teleconnections to lower latitudes. This paper summarizes our present understanding of how heat reaches the ice base from the original sources—inflows of Atlantic and Pacific Water, river discharge, and summer sensible heat and shortwave radiative fluxes at the ocean/ice surface—and speculates on how such processes may change in the new Arctic. The complexity of the coupled Arctic system, and the logistic and technological challenges of working in the Arctic Ocean, require a coordinated interdisciplinary and international program that will not only improve understanding of this critical component of global climate but will also provide opportunities to develop human resources with the skills required to tackle related problems in complex climate systems. We propose a research strategy with components that include 1) improved mapping of the upper- and middepth Arctic Ocean, 2) enhanced quantification of important process, 3) expanded long-term monitoring at key heat-flux locations, and 4) development of numerical capabilities that focus on parameterization of heat-flux mechanisms and their interactions.

Description: 2016-06-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 29 (2016): 1545-1571, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0509.1.

Description: Three sediment records of sea surface temperature (SST) are analyzed that originate from distant locations in the North Atlantic, have centennial-to-multicentennial resolution, are based on the same reconstruction method and chronological assumptions, and span the past 15 000 yr. Using recursive least squares techniques, an estimate of the time-dependent North Atlantic SST field over the last 15 kyr is sought that is consistent with both the SST records and a surface ocean circulation model, given estimates of their respective error (co)variances. Under the authors’ assumptions about data and model errors, it is found that the 10°C mixed layer isotherm, which approximately traces the modern Subpolar Front, would have moved by ~15° of latitude southward (northward) in the eastern North Atlantic at the onset (termination) of the Younger Dryas cold interval (YD), a result significant at the level of two standard deviations in the isotherm position. In contrast, meridional movements of the isotherm in the Newfoundland basin are estimated to be small and not significant. Thus, the isotherm would have pivoted twice around a region southeast of the Grand Banks, with a southwest–northeast orientation during the warm intervals of the Bølling–Allerød and the Holocene and a more zonal orientation and southerly position during the cold interval of the YD. This study provides an assessment of the significance of similar previous inferences and illustrates the potential of recursive least squares in paleoceanography.

Description: OM acknowledges support from the U.S. National Science Foundation. CW acknowledges support from the European Research Council ERC Grant ACCLIMATE 339108.

Description: 2016-08-19

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(6), (2019): 1577-1592, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0124.1.

Description: The main source feeding the abyssal circulation of the North Pacific is the deep, northward flow of 5–6 Sverdrups (Sv; 1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) through the Samoan Passage. A recent field campaign has shown that this flow is hydraulically controlled and that it experiences hydraulic jumps accompanied by strong mixing and dissipation concentrated near several deep sills. By our estimates, the diapycnal density flux associated with this mixing is considerably larger than the diapycnal flux across a typical isopycnal surface extending over the abyssal North Pacific. According to historical hydrographic observations, a second source of abyssal water for the North Pacific is 2.3–2.8 Sv of the dense flow that is diverted around the Manihiki Plateau to the east, bypassing the Samoan Passage. This bypass flow is not confined to a channel and is therefore less likely to experience the strong mixing that is associated with hydraulic transitions. The partitioning of flux between the two branches of the deep flow could therefore be relevant to the distribution of Pacific abyssal mixing. To gain insight into the factors that control the partitioning between these two branches, we develop an abyssal and equator-proximal extension of the “island rule.” Novel features include provisions for the presence of hydraulic jumps as well as identification of an appropriate integration circuit for an abyssal layer to the east of the island. Evaluation of the corresponding circulation integral leads to a prediction of 0.4–2.4 Sv of bypass flow. The circulation integral clearly identifies dissipation and frictional drag effects within the Samoan Passage as crucial elements in partitioning the flow.

Description: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-1029268, OCE-1029483, OCE-1657264, OCE-1657870, OCE-1658027, and OCE-1657795. We thank the captain, crew, and engineers at APL/UW for their hard work and skill.

Description: 2020-06-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(9), (2019): 2337-2343, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0097.1.

Description: The weakly unstable, two-layer model of baroclinic instability is studied in a configuration in which the flow is perturbed at the inflow section of a channel by a slow and periodic perturbation. In a parameter regime where the governing equation would be the Lorenz equations for chaos if the development occurs only in time, the solution behavior becomes considerably more complex as a function of time and downstream coordinate. In the absence of the beta effect it has earlier been shown that the chaotic behavior along characteristics renders the solution nearly discontinuous in the slow downstream coordinate of the asymptotic model. The additional presence of the beta effect, although expunging the chaos for large enough values of the beta parameter, also provides an additional mechanism for abrupt spatial change.

Description: 2020-02-28

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 the Atmospheric Sciences 76(10), (2019): 3013-3027, doi:10.1175/JAS-D-19-0095.1.

Description: Recently Nakamura and Huang proposed a semiempirical, one-dimensional model of atmospheric blocking based on the observed budget of local wave activity in the boreal winter. The model dynamics is akin to that of traffic flow, wherein blocking manifests as traffic jams when the streamwise flux of local wave activity reaches capacity. Stationary waves modulate the jet stream’s capacity to transmit transient waves and thereby localize block formation. Since the model is inexpensive to run numerically, it is suited for computing blocking statistics as a function of climate variables from large-ensemble, parameter sweep experiments. We explore sensitivity of blocking statistics to (i) stationary wave amplitude, (ii) background jet speed, and (iii) transient eddy forcing, using frequency, persistence, and prevalence as metrics. For each combination of parameters we perform 240 runs of 180-day simulations with aperiodic transient eddy forcing, each time randomizing the phase relations in forcing. The model climate shifts rapidly from a block-free state to a block-dominant state as the stationary wave amplitude is increased and/or the jet speed is decreased. When eddy forcing is increased, prevalence increases similarly but frequency decreases as blocks merge and become more persistent. It is argued that the present-day climate lies close to the boundary of the two states and hence its blocking statistics are sensitive to climate perturbations. The result underscores the low confidence in GCM-based assessment of the future trend of blocking under a changing climate, while it also provides a theoretical basis for evaluating model biases and understanding trends in reanalysis data.

Description: The main results of this paper emerged from a group project during Rossbypalooza, a student-led summer school at the University of Chicago in June 2018, with the theme of “Understanding climate through simple models.” The authors thank the participants of the summer school for their valuable feedback. Constructive criticisms of the two anonymous reviewers greatly improved the quality of the manuscript. The work is supported by NSF Grants AGS1563307 and AGS1810964

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(7), (2019): 1973-1994, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-18-0194.1.

Description: Using 18 days of field observations, we investigate the diurnal (D1) frequency wave dynamics on the Tasmanian eastern continental shelf. At this latitude, the D1 frequency is subinertial and separable from the highly energetic near-inertial motion. We use a linear coastal-trapped wave (CTW) solution with the observed background current, stratification, and shelf bathymetry to determine the modal structure of the first three resonant CTWs. We associate the observed D1 velocity with a superimposed mode-zero and mode-one CTW, with mode one dominating mode zero. Both the observed and mode-one D1 velocity was intensified near the thermocline, with stronger velocities occurring when the thermocline stratification was stronger and/or the thermocline was deeper (up to the shelfbreak depth). The CTW modal structure and amplitude varied with the background stratification and alongshore current, with no spring–neap relationship evident for the observed 18 days. Within the surface and bottom Ekman layers on the shelf, the observed velocity phase changed in the cross-shelf and/or vertical directions, inconsistent with an alongshore propagating CTW. In the near-surface and near-bottom regions, the linear CTW solution also did not match the observed velocity, particularly within the bottom Ekman layer. Boundary layer processes were likely causing this observed inconsistency with linear CTW theory. As linear CTW solutions have an idealized representation of boundary dynamics, they should be cautiously applied on the shelf.

Description: An Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP 140101322), and a UWA Research Collaboration Award funded this work. T. L. Schlosser acknowledges the support of an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. We thank the crew, volunteers and scientists who aided in the field data collection aboard the R/V Revelle, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (OCE-1129763). The continental slope moorings, T4 (M32) and T3 (M44), were also funded by the National Science Foundation (OCE-1129763) and were conceived, planned, and executed by Matthew Alford, Jennifer Mackinnon, Jonathan Nash, Harper Simmons, and Gunnar Voet. We also thank Harper Simmons for the combined R/V Revelle multibeam and Geoscience Australia bathymetry used in this study. We thank the two anonymous reviewers whose comments improved this work.

Description: 2020-01-16

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Semper, S., Vage, K., Pickart, R. S., Valdimarsson, H., Torres, D. J., & Jonsson, S. The emergence of the North Icelandic Jet and its evolution from northeast Iceland to Denmark Strait. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 49(10), (2019): 2499-2521, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0088.1.

Description: The North Icelandic Jet (NIJ) is an important source of dense water to the overflow plume passing through Denmark Strait. The properties, structure, and transport of the NIJ are investigated for the first time along its entire pathway following the continental slope north of Iceland, using 13 hydrographic/velocity surveys of high spatial resolution conducted between 2004 and 2018. The comprehensive dataset reveals that the current originates northeast of Iceland and increases in volume transport by roughly 0.4 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) per 100 km until 300 km upstream of Denmark Strait, at which point the highest transport is reached. The bulk of the NIJ transport is confined to a small area in Θ–S space centered near −0.29° ± 0.16°C in Conservative Temperature and 35.075 ± 0.006 g kg−1 in Absolute Salinity. While the hydrographic properties of this transport mode are not significantly modified along the NIJ’s pathway, the transport estimates vary considerably between and within the surveys. Neither a clear seasonal signal nor a consistent link to atmospheric forcing was found, but barotropic and/or baroclinic instability is likely active in the current. The NIJ displays a double-core structure in roughly 50% of the occupations, with the two cores centered at the 600- and 800-m isobaths, respectively. The transport of overflow water 300 km upstream of Denmark Strait exceeds 1.8 ± 0.3 Sv, which is substantially larger than estimates from a year-long mooring array and hydrographic/velocity surveys closer to the strait, where the NIJ merges with the separated East Greenland Current. This implies a more substantial contribution of the NIJ to the Denmark Strait overflow plume than previously envisaged.

Description: Six different research vessels were involved in the collection of the data used in this study: RRS James Clark Ross, R/V Knorr, R/V Bjarni Sæmundsson, R/V Håkon Mosby, NRV Alliance, and R/V Kristine Bonnevie. We thank the captain and crew of each of these vessels for their hard work as well as the many watch standers who have sailed on the cruises and helped collect the measurements. We also thank Frank Bahr for processing the VMADCP data collected on NRV Alliance and Magnús Danielsen for the processing of the hydrographic data collected on R/V Bjarni Sæmundsson. We acknowledge Leah Trafford McRaven for assistance with Fig. 1 and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, which improved the manuscript. Funding for the project was provided by the Bergen Research Foundation Grant BFS2016REK01 (K. Våge and S. Semper), the Norwegian Research Council under Grant Agreement 231647 (K. Våge), and the U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361 (R. S. Pickart and D. J. Torres), as well as OCE-1558742 (R. S. Pickart). The dataset is available on PANGAEA under https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.903535.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 32(13), (2019): 3883-3898, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0735.1.

Description: While it has generally been understood that the production of Labrador Sea Water (LSW) impacts the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC), this relationship has not been explored extensively or validated against observations. To explore this relationship, a suite of global ocean–sea ice models forced by the same interannually varying atmospheric dataset, varying in resolution from non-eddy-permitting to eddy-permitting (1°–1/4°), is analyzed to investigate the local and downstream relationships between LSW formation and the MOC on interannual to decadal time scales. While all models display a strong relationship between changes in the LSW volume and the MOC in the Labrador Sea, this relationship degrades considerably downstream of the Labrador Sea. In particular, there is no consistent pattern among the models in the North Atlantic subtropical basin over interannual to decadal time scales. Furthermore, the strong response of the MOC in the Labrador Sea to LSW volume changes in that basin may be biased by the overproduction of LSW in many models compared to observations. This analysis shows that changes in LSW volume in the Labrador Sea cannot be clearly and consistently linked to a coherent MOC response across latitudes over interannual to decadal time scales in ocean hindcast simulations of the last half century. Similarly, no coherent relationships are identified between the MOC and the Labrador Sea mixed layer depth or the density of newly formed LSW across latitudes or across models over interannual to decadal time scales.

Description: FL and MSL are thankful for the financial support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Physical Oceanography Program (NSF-OCE-12-59102, NSF-OCE-12-59103). The NCAR contribution was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office (CPO) under Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CVP) Grant NA13OAR4310138 and by the NSF Collaborative Research EaSM2 Grant OCE-1243015. NCAR is sponsored by the NSF. NPH is supported by NERC programs U.K. OSNAP (NE/K010875) and ACSIS (National Capability, NE/N018044/1). Y-OK is supported by NOAA CPO CVP (NA17OAR4310111) and NSF EaSM2 grant (OCE-1242989). AR is supported by NASA-ROSES Modeling, Analysis and Prediction 2016 NNX16AC93G-MAP. RZ is supported by NOAA/OAR. Argo data were collected and made freely available by the International Argo Program and the national programs that contribute to it (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu, http://argo.jcommops.org). The Argo Program is part of the Global Ocean Observing System (http://doi.org/10.17882/42182). Data from the RAPID-MOCHA-WBTS array funded by NERC, NSF and NOAA are freely available from www.rapid.ac.uk/rapidmoc. We thank Stephen Griffies for providing access to the GFDL-MOM025 COREII simulation output and Matthew Harrison and Xiaoqin Yan for their comments on the manuscript. We also thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Description: 2020-06-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(9), (2019): 2237-2254, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-18-0181.1.

Description: A cluster of 45 drifters deployed in the Bay of Bengal is tracked for a period of four months. Pair dispersion statistics, from observed drifter trajectories and simulated trajectories based on surface geostrophic velocity, are analyzed as a function of drifter separation and time. Pair dispersion suggests nonlocal dynamics at submesoscales of 1–20 km, likely controlled by the energetic mesoscale eddies present during the observations. Second-order velocity structure functions and their Helmholtz decomposition, however, suggest local dispersion and divergent horizontal flow at scales below 20 km. This inconsistency cannot be explained by inertial oscillations alone, as has been reported in recent studies, and is likely related to other nondispersive processes that impact structure functions but do not enter pair dispersion statistics. At scales comparable to the deformation radius LD, which is approximately 60 km, we find dynamics in agreement with Richardson’s law and observe local dispersion in both pair dispersion statistics and second-order velocity structure functions.

Description: This research was supported by the Air Sea Interaction Regional Initiative (ASIRI) under ONR Grant N00014-13-1-0451 (SE and AM) and ONR Grant N00014-13-1-0477 (VH and LC). Additionally, AM and SE thank NSF (Grant OCE-I434788) and ONR (Grant N00014-16-1-2470) for support; VH and LC were further supported by ONR Grant N00014-15-1-2286 and NOAA GDP Grant NA10OAR4320156. We thank Joe LaCasce, Dhruv Balwada, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and discussions that significantly improved this manuscript. The authors thank the captain and crew of the R/V Roger Revelle. The SVP-type drifters are part of the Global Drifter Program and supported by ONR Grant N00014-15-1-2286 and NOAA GDP Grant NA10OAR4320156 and are available under http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac/. The Ssalto/Duacs altimeter products were produced and distributed by the Copernicus Marine and Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, http://www.marine.copernicus.eu).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 36(10), (2019): 1997-2014, doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-19-0029.1.

Description: While land-based high-frequency (HF) radars are the only instruments capable of resolving both the temporal and spatial variability of surface currents in the coastal ocean, recent high-resolution views suggest that the coastal ocean is more complex than presently deployed radar systems are able to reveal. This work uses a hybrid system, having elements of both phased arrays and direction finding radars, to improve the azimuthal resolution of HF radars. Data from two radars deployed along the U.S. East Coast and configured as 8-antenna grid arrays were used to evaluate potential direction finding and signal, or emitter, detection methods. Direction finding methods such as maximum likelihood estimation generally performed better than the well-known multiple signal classification (MUSIC) method given identical emitter detection methods. However, accurately estimating the number of emitters present in HF radar observations is a challenge. As MUSIC’s direction-of-arrival (DOA) function permits simple empirical tests that dramatically aid the detection process, MUSIC was found to be the superior method in this study. The 8-antenna arrays were able to provide more accurate estimates of MUSIC’s noise subspace than typical 3-antenna systems, eliminating the need for a series of empirical parameters to control MUSIC’s performance. Code developed for this research has been made available in an online repository.

Description: This analysis was supported by NSF Grants OCE-1657896 and OCE-1736930 to Kirincich, OCE-1658475 to Emery and Washburn and OCE-1736709 to Flament. Flament is also supported by NOAA’s Integrated Ocean Observing System through Award NA11NOS0120039. The authors thank Lindsey Benjamin, Alma Castillo, Ken Constantine, Benedicte Dousset, Ian Fernandez, Mael Flament, Dave Harris, Garrett Hebert, Ben Hodges, Victoria Futch, Matt Guanci, and Philip Moravcik for assistance in building, deploying, and operating the radars.

Description: 2020-04-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 32(8), (2019): 2185-2205. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0538.1.

Description: Much attention has been paid to the climatic impacts of changes in the Kuroshio Extension, instead of the Kuroshio in the East China Sea (ECS). This study, however, reveals the prominent influences of the lateral shift of the Kuroshio at interannual time scale in late spring [April–June (AMJ)] on the sea surface temperature (SST) and precipitation in summer around the ECS, based on high-resolution satellite observations and ERA-Interim. A persistent offshore displacement of the Kuroshio during AMJ can result in cold SST anomalies in the northern ECS and the Japan/East Sea until late summer, which correspondingly causes anomalous cooling of the lower troposphere. Consequently, the anomalous cold SST in the northern ECS acts as a key driver to robustly enhance the precipitation from the Yangtze River delta to Kyushu in early summer (May–August) and over the central ECS in late summer (July–September). In view of the moisture budget analysis, two different physical processes modulated by the lateral shift of the Kuroshio are identified to account for the distinct responses of precipitation in early and late summer, respectively. First, the anomalous cold SST in the northern ECS induced by the Kuroshio offshore shift is likely conducive to the earlier arrival of the mei-yu–baiu front at 30°–32°N and its subsequent slower northward movement, which may prolong the local rainy season, leading to the increased rain belt in early summer. Second, the persistent cold SST anomalies in late summer strengthen the near-surface baroclinicity and the associated strong atmospheric fronts embedded in the extratropical cyclones over the central ECS, which in turn enhances the local rainfall.

Description: We appreciate three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments. This work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFA0601804), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Projects (91858102, 41490643, 41490640, 41506009, U1606402) and the OUC–WHOI joint research program (21366).

Description: 2019-10-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(4), (2019): 1035-1053, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0136.1.

Description: Ocean stratification and the vertical extent of the mixed layer influence the rate at which the ocean and atmosphere exchange properties. This process has direct impacts for anthropogenic heat and carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean. Submesoscale instabilities that evolve over space (1–10 km) and time (from hours to days) scales directly influence mixed layer variability and are ubiquitous in the Southern Ocean. Mixed layer eddies contribute to mixed layer restratification, while down-front winds, enhanced by strong synoptic storms, can erode stratification by a cross-frontal Ekman buoyancy flux. This study investigates the role of these submesoscale processes on the subseasonal and interannual variability of the mixed layer stratification using four years of high-resolution glider data in the Southern Ocean. An increase of stratification from winter to summer occurs due to a seasonal warming of the mixed layer. However, we observe transient decreases in stratification lasting from days to weeks, which can arrest the seasonal restratification by up to two months after surface heat flux becomes positive. This leads to interannual differences in the timing of seasonal restratification by up to 36 days. Parameterizing the Ekman buoyancy flux in a one-dimensional mixed layer model reduces the magnitude of stratification compared to when the model is run using heat and freshwater fluxes alone. Importantly, the reduced stratification occurs during the spring restratification period, thereby holding important implications for mixed layer dynamics in climate models as well as physical–biological coupling in the Southern Ocean.

Description: MdP acknowledges numerous research visits to the Department of Marine Science, University of Gothenburg, and a visit to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which greatly enhanced this work. We thank SANAP and the captain and crew of the S.A. Agulhas II for their assistance in the deployment and retrieval of the gliders. We acknowledge the work of SAMERC-STS for housing, managing, and piloting the gliders. SS was supported by NRF-SANAP Grant SNA14071475720 and a Wallenberg Academy Fellowship (WAF 2015.0186). Lastly, SS thanks the numerous technical assistance, advice, and IOP hosting provided by Geoff Shilling and Craig Lee of the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington.

Description: 2020-04-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(6), (2019): 1639-1649, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-18-0154.1.

Description: Using a recently developed asymptotic theory of internal solitary wave propagation over a sloping bottom in a rotating ocean, some new qualitative and quantitative features of this process are analyzed for internal waves in a two-layer ocean. The interplay between different singularities—terminal damping due to radiation and disappearing quadratic nonlinearity, and reaching an “internal beach” (e.g., zero lower-layer depth)—is discussed. Examples of the adiabatic evolution of a single solitary wave over a uniformly sloping bottom under realistic conditions are considered in more detail and compared with numerical solutions of the variable-coefficient, rotation-modified Korteweg–de Vries (rKdV) equation.

Description: LAO is thankful to Yu. Stepanyants for broad discussions of mutual benefit. KRH was supported by Grant N00014-18-1-2542 from the Office of Naval Research.

Description: 2020-06-13

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(5), (2019): 897-908, doi:10.1175/BAMS-D-19-0130.1.

Description: As states, cities, tribes, and private interests cope with climate damages and seek to increase preparedness and resilience, they will need to navigate myriad choices and options available to them. Making these choices in ways that identify pathways for climate action that support their development objectives will require constructive public dialogue, community participation, and flexible and ongoing access to science- and experience-based knowledge. In 2016, a Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) was convened to recommend how to conduct a sustained National Climate Assessment (NCA) to increase the relevance and usability of assessments for informing action. The FAC was disbanded in 2017, but members and additional experts reconvened to complete the report that is presented here. A key recommendation is establishing a new nonfederal “climate assessment consortium” to increase the role of state/local/tribal government and civil society in assessments. The expanded process would 1) focus on applied problems faced by practitioners, 2) organize sustained partnerships for collaborative learning across similar projects and case studies to identify effective tested practices, and 3) assess and improve knowledge-based methods for project implementation. Specific recommendations include evaluating climate models and data using user-defined metrics; improving benefit–cost assessment and supporting decision-making under uncertainty; and accelerating application of tools and methods such as citizen science, artificial intelligence, indicators, and geospatial analysis. The recommendations are the result of broad consultation and present an ambitious agenda for federal agencies, state/local/tribal jurisdictions, universities and the research sector, professional associations, nongovernmental and community-based organizations, and private-sector firms.

Description: This report would not have been possible without the support and participation of numerous organizations and individuals. We thank New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo for announcing in his 2018 State of the State agenda that the IAC would be reconvened. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (Contract ID 123416), Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and the American Meteorological Society provided essential financial support and much more, including sage advice and moral support from John O’Leary, Shara Mohtadi, Steve Cohen, Alex Halliday, Peter deMenocal, Keith Seitter, Paul Higgins, and Bill Hooke. We thank the attendees of a workshop, generously funded by the Kresge Foundation in November of 2017, that laid a foundation for the idea to establish a civil-society-based assessment consortium. During the course of preparing the report, IAC members consulted with individuals too numerous to list here—state, local, and tribal officials; researchers; experts in nongovernmental and community-based organizations; and professionals in engineering, architecture, public health, adaptation, and other areas. We are so grateful for their time and expertise. We thank the members and staff of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program for providing individual comments on preliminary recommendations during several discussions in open sessions of their meetings. The following individuals provided detailed comments on an earlier version of this report, which greatly sharpened our thinking and recommendations: John Balbus, Tom Dietz, Phil Duffy, Baruch Fischhoff, Brenda Hoppe, Melissa Kenney, Linda Mearns, Claudia Nierenberg, Kathleen Segerson, Soroosh Sorooshian, Chris Weaver, and Brian Zuckerman. Mary Black provided insightful copy editing of several versions of the report. We also thank four anonymous reviewers for their effort and care in critiquing and improving the report. It is the dedication, thoughtful feedback, expertise, care, and commitment of all these people and more that not only made this report possible, but allow us all to continue to support smart and insightful actions in a changing climate. We are grateful as authors and as global citizens. Author contributions: RM, SA, KB, MB, AC, JD, PF, KJ, AJ, KK, JK, ML, JM, RP, TR, LS, JS, JW, and DZ were members of the IAC and shared in researching, discussing, drafting, and approving the report. BA, JF, AG, LJ, SJ, PK, RK, AM, RM, JN, WS, JS, PT, GY, and RZ contributed to specific sections of the report.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(6), (2019):1463-1483, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-18-0213.1.

Description: A set of float trajectories, deployed at 1500- and 2500-m depths throughout the deep Gulf of Mexico from 2011 to 2015, are analyzed for mesoscale processes under the Loop Current (LC). In the eastern basin, December 2012–June 2014 had 〉40 floats per month, which was of sufficient density to allow capturing detailed flow patterns of deep eddies and topographic Rossby waves (TRWs), while two LC eddies formed and separated. A northward advance of the LC front compresses the lower water column and generates an anticyclone. For an extended LC, baroclinic instability eddies (of both signs) develop under the southward-propagating large-scale meanders of the upper-layer jet, resulting in a transfer of eddy kinetic energy (EKE) to the lower layer. The increase in lower-layer EKE occurs only over a few months during meander activity and LC eddy detachment events, a relatively short interval compared with the LC intrusion cycle. Deep EKE of these eddies is dispersed to the west and northwest through radiating TRWs, of which examples were found to the west of the LC. Because of this radiation of EKE, the lower layer of the eastern basin becomes relatively quiescent, particularly in the northeastern basin, when the LC is retracted and a LC eddy has departed. A mean west-to-east, anticyclone–cyclone dipole flow under a mean LC was directly comparable to similar results from a previous moored LC array and also showed connections to an anticlockwise boundary current in the southeastern basin.

Description: The authors were supported by the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Contract M08PC20043 to Leidos, Inc., Raleigh, NC. The authors also wish to acknowledge the enthusiastic support of Dr. Alexis Lugo-Fernández, the BOEM Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative, during the study into the Deep Circulation of the Gulf of Mexico, using Lagrangian Methods. Thanks go to the captains and crews of the R/V Pelican and B/O Justo Sierra, J. Malbrough (LUMCON), J. Singer (Leidos), J. Valdes (WHOI), B. Guest (WHOI), and the CANEK group (CICESE).

Description: 2020-05-29

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 36(4), (2019): 733-744, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0050.1.

Description: Sea-Bird Scientific SBE 41CP CTDs are used on autonomous floats in the global Argo ocean observing program to measure the temperature and salinity of the upper ocean. While profiling, the sensors are subject to dynamic errors as they profile through vertical gradients. Applying dynamic corrections to the temperature and conductivity data reduces these errors and improves sensor accuracy. A series of laboratory experiments conducted in a stratified tank are used to characterize dynamic errors and determine corrections. The corrections are adapted for Argo floats, and recommendations for future implementation are presented.

Description: 2020-04-23

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Weather Climate and Society 11(3), (2019):465-487, doi: 10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0134.1.

Description: As states, cities, tribes, and private interests cope with climate damages and seek to increase preparedness and resilience, they will need to navigate myriad choices and options available to them. Making these choices in ways that identify pathways for climate action that support their development objectives will require constructive public dialogue, community participation, and flexible and ongoing access to science- and experience-based knowledge. In 2016, a Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) was convened to recommend how to conduct a sustained National Climate Assessment (NCA) to increase the relevance and usability of assessments for informing action. The FAC was disbanded in 2017, but members and additional experts reconvened to complete the report that is presented here. A key recommendation is establishing a new nonfederal “climate assessment consortium” to increase the role of state/local/tribal government and civil society in assessments. The expanded process would 1) focus on applied problems faced by practitioners, 2) organize sustained partnerships for collaborative learning across similar projects and case studies to identify effective tested practices, and 3) assess and improve knowledge-based methods for project implementation. Specific recommendations include evaluating climate models and data using user-defined metrics; improving benefit–cost assessment and supporting decision-making under uncertainty; and accelerating application of tools and methods such as citizen science, artificial intelligence, indicators, and geospatial analysis. The recommendations are the result of broad consultation and present an ambitious agenda for federal agencies, state/local/tribal jurisdictions, universities and the research sector, professional associations, nongovernmental and community-based organizations, and private-sector firms.

Description: This report would not have been possible without the support and participation of numerous organizations and individuals. We thank New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo for announcing in his 2018 State of the State agenda that the IAC would be reconvened. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (Contract ID 123416), Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and the American Meteorological Society provided essential financial support and much more, including sage advice and moral support from John O’Leary, Shara Mohtadi, Steve Cohen, Alex Halliday, Peter deMenocal, Keith Seitter, Paul Higgins, and Bill Hooke. We thank the attendees of a workshop, generously funded by the Kresge Foundation in November of 2017, that laid a foundation for the idea to establish a civil-society-based assessment consortium. During the course of preparing the report, IAC members consulted with individuals too numerous to list here—state, local, and tribal officials; researchers; experts in nongovernmental and community-based organizations; and professionals in engineering, architecture, public health, adaptation, and other areas. We are so grateful for their time and expertise. We thank the members and staff of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee to Advise the U.S. Global Change Research Program for providing individual comments on preliminary recommendations during several discussions in open sessions of their meetings. The following individuals provided detailed comments on an earlier version of this report, which greatly sharpened our thinking and recommendations: John Balbus, Tom Dietz, Phil Duffy, Baruch Fischhoff, Brenda Hoppe, Melissa Kenney, Linda Mearns, Claudia Nierenberg, Kathleen Segerson, Soroosh Sorooshian, Chris Weaver, and Brian Zuckerman. Mary Black provided insightful copy editing of several versions of the report. We also thank four anonymous reviewers for their effort and care in critiquing and improving the report. It is the dedication, thoughtful feedback, expertise, care, and commitment of all these people and more that not only made this report possible, but allow us all to continue to support smart and insightful actions in a changing climate. We are grateful as authors and as global citizens. Author contributions: RM, SA, KB, MB, AC, JD, PF, KJ, AJ, KK, JK, ML, JM, RP, TR, LS, JS, JW, and DZ were members of the IAC and shared in researching, discussing, drafting, and approving the report. BA, JF, AG, LJ, SJ, PK, RK, AM, RM, JN, WS, JS, PT, GY, and RZ contributed to specific sections of the report.

Description: 2020-05-21

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(6), (2019):1619-1637, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0175.1.

Description: Although the hydrodynamics of river meanders are well studied, the influence of curvature on flow in estuaries, with alternating tidal flow and varying water levels and salinity gradients, is less well understood. This paper describes a field study on curvature effects in a narrow salt-marsh creek with sharp bends. The key observations, obtained during times of negligible stratification, are 1) distinct differences between secondary flow during ebb and flood, with helical circulation as in rivers during ebb and a reversed circulation during flood, and 2) maximum (ebb and flood) streamwise velocities near the inside of the bend, unlike typical river bend flow. The streamwise velocity structure is explained by the lack of a distinct point bar and the relatively deep cross section in the estuary, which means that curvature-induced inward momentum redistribution is not overcome by outward redistribution by frictional and topographic effects. Through differential advection of the along-estuary salinity gradient, the laterally sheared streamwise velocity generates lateral salinity differences, with the saltiest water near the inside during flood. The resulting lateral baroclinic pressure gradient force enhances the standard helical circulation during ebb but counteracts it during flood. This first leads to a reversed secondary circulation during flood in the outer part of the cross section, which triggers a positive feedback mechanism by bringing slower-moving water from the outside inward along the surface. This leads to a reversal of the vertical shear in the streamwise flow, and therefore in the centrifugal force, which further enhances the reversed secondary circulation.

Description: This project was funded by NSF Grant OCE-1634490. During this work W.M. Kranenburg was supported as USGS Postdoctoral Scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. A.M.P. Garcia was supported by the Michael J. Kowalski Fellowship in Ocean Science and Engineering (AMPG), and the Diversity Fellowship of the MIT Office of the Dean of Graduate Education (AMPG). The authors thank Jay Sisson for the technical support and Peter Traykovski for providing the bathymetric data. Also, the suggestions for improvement by Dr. K. Blanckaert and an anonymous reviewer are thankfully acknowledged.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 29 (2016): 3143-3159, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0520.1.

Description: Moisture originating from the subtropical North Atlantic feeds precipitation throughout the Western Hemisphere. This ocean-to-land moisture transport leaves its imprint on sea surface salinity (SSS), enabling SSS over the subtropical oceans to be used as an indicator of terrestrial precipitation. This study demonstrates that springtime SSS over the northwestern portion of the subtropical North Atlantic significantly correlates with summertime precipitation over the U.S. Midwest. The linkage between springtime SSS and the Midwest summer precipitation is established through ocean-to-land moisture transport followed by a soil moisture feedback over the southern United States. In the spring, high SSS over the northwestern subtropical Atlantic coincides with a local increase in moisture flux divergence. The moisture flux is then directed toward and converges over the southern United States, which experiences increased precipitation and soil moisture. The increased soil moisture influences the regional water cycle both thermodynamically and dynamically, leading to excessive summer precipitation in the Midwest. Thermodynamically, the increased soil moisture tends to moisten the lower troposphere and enhances the meridional humidity gradient north of 36°N. Thus, more moisture will be transported and converged into the Midwest by the climatological low-level wind. Dynamically, the increases in soil moisture over the southern United States enhance the west–east soil moisture gradient eastward of the Rocky Mountains, which can help to intensify the Great Plains low-level jet in the summer, converging more moisture into the Midwest. Owing to these robust physical linkages, the springtime SSS outweighs the leading SST modes in predicting the Midwest summer precipitation and significantly improves rainfall prediction in this region.

Description: L. L. is supported by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), with funding provided by the Ocean and Climate Change Institute (OCCI). R. W. S. is supported by NASA Grant NNX12AF59G S03 and NSF Grant OCE-1129646. C. C. U. is supported by NSF Grant AGS-1355339. K. B. K. is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the James E. and Barbara V. Moltz Fellowship administered by the WHOI OCCI.

Description: 2016-10-19

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 29 (2016): 2123-2144, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0511.1.

Description: The atmospheric response to the Kuroshio Extension (KE) variability during 1979–2012 is investigated using a KE index derived from sea surface height measurements and an eddy-resolving ocean general circulation model hindcast. When the index is positive, the KE is in the stable state, strengthened and shifted northward, with lower eddy kinetic energy, and the Kuroshio–Oyashio Extension (KOE) region is anomalously warm. The reverse holds when the index is negative. Regression analysis shows that there is a coherent atmospheric response to the decadal KE fluctuations between October and January. The KOE warming generates an upward surface heat flux that leads to local ascending motions and a northeastward shift of the zones of maximum baroclinicity, eddy heat and moisture fluxes, and the storm track. The atmospheric response consists of an equivalent barotropic large-scale signal, with a downstream high and a low over the Arctic. The heating and transient eddy anomalies excite stationary Rossby waves that propagate the signal poleward and eastward. There is a warming typically exceeding 0.6 K at 900 hPa over eastern Asia and western United States, which reduces the snow cover by 4%–6%. One month later, in November–February, a high appears over northwestern Europe, and the hemispheric teleconnection bears some similarity with the Arctic Oscillation. Composite analysis shows that the atmospheric response primarily occurs during the stable state of the KE, while no evidence of a significant large-scale atmospheric response is found in the unstable state. Arguments are given to explain this strong asymmetry.

Description: This research has received funding from the European Union 7th Framework Program (FP7 2007–2013) under Grant Agreement 308299 (NACLIM), from NSF Grant AGS CLD 1035423, and from Agence Nationale de la Recherche under the reference ANR 2011 Blanc SIMI 5-6 014 01.

Description: 2016-09-23

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 33 (2016): 1225-1235, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-15-0115.1.

Description: Accurate estimation of the transport probabilities among regions in the ocean provides valuable information for understanding plankton transport, the spread of pollutants, and the movement of water masses. Individual-based particle-tracking models simulate a large ensemble of Lagrangian particles and are a common method to estimate these transport probabilities. Simulating a large ensemble of Lagrangian particles is computationally expensive, and appropriately allocating resources can reduce the cost of this method. Two universal questions in the design of studies that use Lagrangian particle tracking are how many particles to release and how to distribute particle releases. A method is presented for tailoring the number and the release location of particles to most effectively achieve the objectives of a study. The method detailed here is a sequential analysis procedure that seeks to minimize the number of particles that are required to satisfy a predefined metric of result quality. The study assesses the result quality as the precision of the estimates for the elements of a transport matrix and also describes how the method may be extended for use with other metrics. Applying this methodology to both a theoretical system and a particle transport model of the Gulf of Maine results in more precise estimates of the transport probabilities with fewer particles than from uniformly or randomly distributing particle releases. The application of this method can help reduce the cost of and increase the robustness of results from studies that use Lagrangian particles.

Description: This research was supported by the Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) program and the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-1459133 and Grant OCE-1031256.

Description: 2016-12-02

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 100(5), (2019): 909-912, doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0319.1.

Description: The open availability and wide accessibility of digital scientific resources, such as articles and datasets, is becoming the norm for twenty-first-century science. Geoscience researchers are now being asked by funding agencies and scientific publishers to archive and cite data to support open access but often struggle to understand, interpret, and fulfill these requirements. To fulfill the promise of new open data initiatives, 1) scientific resources (e.g., data and software) must be collected and documented properly; 2) repository services, including preservation and storage capabilities, must be maintained, supported, and improved over time; and 3) governance institutions must be established. These issues were discussed in the Geoscience Digital Data Resource and Repository Service (GeoDaRRS) workshop,1 held in August 2018, at NCAR. The workshop brought together more than 60 geoscience researchers, technology experts, scientific publishers, funders, and data repository personnel to discuss data management challenges and opportunities within the geosciences. This included exploring whether new services are needed to complement existing data facilities, particularly in the areas of 1) data management planning support resources and 2) repository services for geoscience researchers who have data that do not fit in any existing repository. More details on the workshop agenda and recommendations are available in the final workshop report (Mayernik et al. 2018).

Description: The National Science Foundation (NSF) provided the funding support for this workshop. We also thank Cecilia Banner and Elizabeth Faircloth of NCAR for administrative and logistical support.

Description: 2020-06-04

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Physical Oceanography 49(6), (2019): 1561-1575, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0002.1.

Description: Within the pycnocline, where diapycnal mixing is suppressed, both the vertical movement (uplift) of isopycnal surfaces and upward motion along sloping isopycnals supply nutrients to the euphotic layer, but the relative importance of each of these mechanisms is unknown. We present a method for decomposing vertical velocity w into two components in a Lagrangian frame: vertical velocity along sloping isopycnal surfaces and the adiabatic vertical velocity of isopycnal surfaces . We show that , where is the isopycnal slope and is the geometric aspect ratio of the flow, and that accounts for 10%–25% of the total vertical velocity w for isopycnal slopes representative of the midlatitude pycnocline. We perform the decomposition of w in a process study model of a midlatitude eddying flow field generated with a range of isopycnal slopes. A spectral decomposition of the velocity components shows that while is the largest contributor to vertical velocity, is of comparable magnitude at horizontal scales less than about 10 km, that is, at submesoscales. Increasing the horizontal grid resolution of models is known to increase vertical velocity; this increase is disproportionately due to better resolution of , as is shown here by comparing 1- and 4-km resolution model runs. Along-isopycnal vertical transport can be an important contributor to the vertical flux of tracers, including oxygen, nutrients, and chlorophyll, although we find weak covariance between vertical velocity and nutrient anomaly in our model.

Description: MAF was supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and AM by NSF OCE-I434788. The authors thank Glenn Flierl and Ruth Curry for helpful conversations, and three anonymous reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript.

Description: 2020-06-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 36(9), (2019): 1789-1812, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0223.1.

Description: Temporal vertical eddy viscosity coefficient (VEVC) in an Ekman layer model is estimated using an adjoint method. Twin experiments are carried out to investigate the influences of several factors on inversion results, and the conclusions of twin experiments are 1) the adjoint method is a capable method to estimate different kinds of temporal distributions of VEVCs; 2) the gradient descent algorithm is better than CONMIN and L-BFGS for the present problem, although the posterior two algorithms perform better on convergence efficiency; 3) inversion results are sensitive to initial guesses; 4) the model is applicable to different wind conditions; 5) the inversion result with thick boundary layer depth (BLD) is slightly better than thin BLD; 6) inversion results are more sensitive to observations in upper layers than those in lower layers; 7) inversion results are still acceptable when data noise exists, indicating the method can sustain noise to a certain degree; 8) a regularization method is proved to be useful to improve the results for present problem; and 9) the present method can tolerate the existence of balance errors due to the imperfection of governing equations. The methodology is further validated in practical experiments where Ekman currents are derived from Bermuda Testbed Mooring data and assimilated. Modeled Ekman currents coincide well with observed ones, especially for upper layers. The results demonstrate that the assumptions of depth dependence and time dependence are equally important for VEVCs. The feasibility of the typical Ekman model, the imperfection of Ekman balance equations, and the deficiencies of the present method are discussed. This method provides a potential way to realize the time variations of VEVCs in ocean models.

Description: The authors thank the seven reviewers for the constructive suggestions which have greatly improved the manuscript. Financial support is provided by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (Grants 2017YFA0604100 and 2017YFC1404000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 41876086 and 41806012), Scientific Research Fund of the Second Institute of Oceanography, MNR (Grant JG1819), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China. Jicai thanks the support of China Scholarship Council for the visiting research in WHOI, and he also thanks the host of WHOI. BTM data are provided by Ocean Physics Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara (http://opl.ucsb.edu).

Description: 2020-03-10

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. 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 32(5) (2019): 1551-1571. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-18-0444.1.

Description: Previous studies have documented a poleward shift in the subsiding branches of Earth’s Hadley circulation since 1979 but have disagreed on the causes of these observed changes and the ability of global climate models to capture them. This synthesis paper reexamines a number of contradictory claims in the past literature and finds that the tropical expansion indicated by modern reanalyses is within the bounds of models’ historical simulations for the period 1979–2005. Earlier conclusions that models were underestimating the observed trends relied on defining the Hadley circulation using the mass streamfunction from older reanalyses. The recent observed tropical expansion has similar magnitudes in the annual mean in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH), but models suggest that the factors driving the expansion differ between the hemispheres. In the SH, increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) and stratospheric ozone depletion contributed to tropical expansion over the late twentieth century, and if GHGs continue increasing, the SH tropical edge is projected to shift further poleward over the twenty-first century, even as stratospheric ozone concentrations recover. In the NH, the contribution of GHGs to tropical expansion is much smaller and will remain difficult to detect in a background of large natural variability, even by the end of the twenty-first century. To explain similar recent tropical expansion rates in the two hemispheres, natural variability must be taken into account. Recent coupled atmosphere–ocean variability, including the Pacific decadal oscillation, has contributed to tropical expansion. However, in models forced with observed sea surface temperatures, tropical expansion rates still vary widely because of internal atmospheric variability.

Description: We thank Ori Adam, Nick Davis, Isaac Held, Tim Merlis, Lorenzo Polvani, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and suggestions. We thank U.S. CLIVAR and the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) for funding working groups that stimulated this project. We thank all members of the working groups for helpful discussions, and the U.S. CLIVAR and ISSI offices and their sponsoring agencies (NASA,NOAA,NSF,DOE, ESA, Swiss Confederation, Swiss Academy of Sciences, and University of Bern) for supporting these groups and activities.We acknowledge WCRP’sWorking Group on CoupledModelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modeling groups (Table 2) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the U.S. DOE PCMDI provides coordinating support and led development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals.

Description: 2019-08-06

Description: We describe the historical evolution of the conceptualization, formulation, quantification, application, and utilization of “radiative forcing” (RF) of Earth’s climate. Basic theories of shortwave and longwave radiation were developed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and established the analytical framework for defining and quantifying the perturbations to Earth’s radiative energy balance by natural and anthropogenic influences. The insight that Earth’s climate could be radiatively forced by changes in carbon dioxide, first introduced in the nineteenth century, gained empirical support with sustained observations of the atmospheric concentrations of the gas beginning in 1957. Advances in laboratory and field measurements, theory, instrumentation, computational technology, data, and analysis of well-mixed greenhouse gases and the global climate system through the twentieth century enabled the development and formalism of RF; this allowed RF to be related to changes in global-mean surface temperature with the aid of increasingly sophisticated models. This in turn led to RF becoming firmly established as a principal concept in climate science by 1990. The linkage with surface temperature has proven to be the most important application of the RF concept, enabling a simple metric to evaluate the relative climate impacts of different agents. The late 1970s and 1980s saw accelerated developments in quantification, including the first assessment of the effect of the forcing due to the doubling of carbon dioxide on climate (the “Charney” report). The concept was subsequently extended to a wide variety of agents beyond well-mixed greenhouse gases (WMGHGs; carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons) to short-lived species such as ozone. The WMO and IPCC international assessments began the important sequence of periodic evaluations and quantifications of the forcings by natural (solar irradiance changes and stratospheric aerosols resulting from volcanic eruptions) and a growing set of anthropogenic agents (WMGHGs, ozone, aerosols, land surface changes, contrails). From the 1990s to the present, knowledge and scientific confidence in the radiative agents acting on the climate system have proliferated. The conceptual basis of RF has also evolved as both our understanding of the way radiative forcing drives climate change and the diversity of the forcing mechanisms have grown. This has led to the current situation where “effective radiative forcing” (ERF) is regarded as the preferred practical definition of radiative forcing in order to better capture the link between forcing and global-mean surface temperature change. The use of ERF, however, comes with its own attendant issues, including challenges in its diagnosis from climate models, its applications to small forcings, and blurring of the distinction between rapid climate adjustments (fast responses) and climate feedbacks; this will necessitate further elaboration of its utility in the future. Global climate model simulations of radiative perturbations by various agents have established how the forcings affect other climate variables besides temperature (e.g., precipitation). The forcing–response linkage as simulated by models, including the diversity in the spatial distribution of forcings by the different agents, has provided a practical demonstration of the effectiveness of agents in perturbing the radiative energy balance and causing climate changes. The significant advances over the past half century have established, with very high confidence, that the global-mean ERF due to human activity since preindustrial times is positive (the 2013 IPCC assessment gives a best estimate of 2.3 W m−2, with a range from 1.1 to 3.3 W m−2; 90% confidence interval). Further, except in the immediate aftermath of climatically significant volcanic eruptions, the net anthropogenic forcing dominates over natural radiative forcing mechanisms. Nevertheless, the substantial remaining uncertainty in the net anthropogenic ERF leads to large uncertainties in estimates of climate sensitivity from observations and in predicting future climate impacts. The uncertainty in the ERF arises principally from the incorporation of the rapid climate adjustments in the formulation, the well-recognized difficulties in characterizing the preindustrial state of the atmosphere, and the incomplete knowledge of the interactions of aerosols with clouds. This uncertainty impairs the quantitative evaluation of climate adaptation and mitigation pathways in the future. A grand challenge in Earth system science lies in continuing to sustain the relatively simple essence of the radiative forcing concept in a form similar to that originally devised, and at the same time improving the quantification of the forcing. This, in turn, demands an accurate, yet increasingly complex and comprehensive, accounting of the relevant processes in the climate system.

Description: The microphysical processes inside convective clouds play an important role in climate. They directly control the amount of detrainment of cloud hydrometeor and water vapor from updrafts. The detrained water substance in turn affects the anvil cloud formation, upper-tropospheric water vapor distribution, and thus the atmospheric radiation budget. In global climate models, convective parameterization schemes have not explicitly represented microphysics processes in updrafts until recently. In this paper, the authors provide a review of existing schemes for convective microphysics parameterization. These schemes are broadly divided into three groups: tuning-parameter-based schemes (simplest), single-moment schemes, and two-moment schemes (most comprehensive). Common weaknesses of the tuning-parameter-based and single-moment schemes are outlined. Examples are presented from one of the two-moment schemes to demonstrate the performance of the scheme in simulating the hydrometeor distribution in convection and its representation of the effect of aerosols on convection.

Description: Today’s global Earth system models began as simple regional models of tropospheric weather systems. Over the past century, the physical realism of the models has steadily increased, while the scope of the models has broadened to include the global troposphere and stratosphere, the ocean, the vegetated land surface, and terrestrial ice sheets. This chapter gives an approximately chronological account of the many and profound conceptual and technological advances that made today’s models possible. For brevity, we omit any discussion of the roles of chemistry and biogeochemistry, and terrestrial ice sheets.

Description: The authors present an observationally based evaluation of the vertically resolved cloud ice water content (CIWC) and vertically integrated cloud ice water path (CIWP) as well as radiative shortwave flux downward at the surface (RSDS), reflected shortwave (RSUT), and radiative longwave flux upward at top of atmosphere (RLUT) of present-day global climate models (GCMs), notably twentieth-century simulations from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), and compare these results to those of the third phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) and two recent reanalyses. Three different CloudSat and/or Cloud–Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) combined ice water products and two methods are used to remove the contribution from the convective core ice mass and/or precipitating cloud hydrometeors with variable sizes and falling speeds so that a robust observational estimate can be obtained for model evaluations. The results show that, for annual mean CIWC and CIWP, there are factors of 2–10 (either over- or underestimate) in the differences between observations and models for a majority of the GCMs and for a number of regions. Most of the GCMs in CMIP3 and CMIP5 significantly underestimate the total ice water mass because models only consider suspended cloud mass, ignoring falling and convective core cloud mass. For the annual means of RSDS, RLUT, and RSUT, a majority of the models have significant regional biases ranging from −30 to 30 W m−2. Based on these biases in the annual means, there is virtually no progress in the simulation fidelity of RSDS, RLUT, and RSUT fluxes from CMIP3 to CMIP5, even though there is about a 50% bias reduction improvement of global annual mean CIWP from CMIP3 to CMIP5. It is concluded that at least a part of these persistent biases stem from the common GCM practice of ignoring the effects of precipitating and/or convective core ice and liquid in their radiation calculations.

Description: This chapter reviews the history of the discovery of cloud nuclei and their impacts on cloud microphysics and the climate system. Pioneers including John Aitken, Sir John Mason, Hilding Köhler, Christian Junge, Sean Twomey, and Kenneth Whitby laid the foundations of the field. Through their contributions and those of many others, rapid progress has been made in the last 100 years in understanding the sources, evolution, and composition of the atmospheric aerosol, the interactions of particles with atmospheric water vapor, and cloud microphysical processes. Major breakthroughs in measurement capabilities and in theoretical understanding have elucidated the characteristics of cloud condensation nuclei and ice nucleating particles and the role these play in shaping cloud microphysical properties and the formation of precipitation. Despite these advances, not all their impacts on cloud formation and evolution have been resolved. The resulting radiative forcing on the climate system due to aerosol–cloud interactions remains an unacceptably large uncertainty in future climate projections. Process-level understanding of aerosol–cloud interactions remains insufficient to support technological mitigation strategies such as intentional weather modification or geoengineering to accelerating Earth-system-wide changes in temperature and weather patterns.

Description: Over the past 100 years, the collaborative effort of the international science community, including government weather services and the media, along with the associated proliferation of environmental observations, improved scientific understanding, and growth of technology, has radically transformed weather forecasting into an effective global and regional environmental prediction capability. This chapter traces the evolution of forecasting, starting in 1919 [when the American Meteorological Society (AMS) was founded], over four eras separated by breakpoints at 1939, 1956, and 1985. The current state of forecasting could not have been achieved without essential collaboration within and among countries in pursuing the common weather and Earth-system prediction challenge. AMS itself has had a strong role in enabling this international collaboration.

Description: The year 1919 was important in meteorology, not only because it was the year that the American Meteorological Society was founded, but also for two other reasons. One of the foundational papers in extratropical cyclone structure by Jakob Bjerknes was published in 1919, leading to what is now known as the Norwegian cyclone model. Also that year, a series of meetings was held that led to the formation of organizations that promoted the international collaboration and scientific exchange required for extratropical cyclone research, which by necessity involves spatial scales spanning national borders. This chapter describes the history of scientific inquiry into the structure, evolution, and dynamics of extratropical cyclones, their constituent fronts, and their attendant jet streams and storm tracks. We refer to these phenomena collectively as the centerpiece of meteorology because of their central role in fostering meteorological research during this century. This extremely productive period in extratropical cyclone research has been possible because of 1) the need to address practical challenges of poor forecasts that had large socioeconomic consequences, 2) the intermingling of theory, observations, and diagnosis (including dynamical modeling) to provide improved physical understanding and conceptual models, and 3) strong international cooperation. Conceptual frameworks for cyclones arise from a desire to classify and understand cyclones; they include the Norwegian cyclone model and its sister the Shapiro–Keyser cyclone model. The challenge of understanding the dynamics of cyclones led to such theoretical frameworks as quasigeostrophy, baroclinic instability, semigeostrophy, and frontogenesis. The challenge of predicting explosive extratropical cyclones in particular led to new theoretical developments such as potential-vorticity thinking and downstream development. Deeper appreciation of the limits of predictability has resulted from an evolution from determinism to chaos. Last, observational insights led to detailed cyclone and frontal structure, storm tracks, and rainbands.

Description: Mountains significantly influence weather and climate on Earth, including disturbed surface winds; altered distribution of precipitation; gravity waves reaching the upper atmosphere; and modified global patterns of storms, fronts, jet streams, and climate. All of these impacts arise because Earth’s mountains penetrate deeply into the atmosphere. This penetration can be quantified by comparing mountain heights to several atmospheric reference heights such as density scale height, water vapor scale height, airflow blocking height, and the height of natural atmospheric layers. The geometry of Earth’s terrain can be analyzed quantitatively using statistical, matrix, and spectral methods. In this review, we summarize how our understanding of orographic effects has progressed over 100 years using the equations for atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics, numerical modeling, and many clever in situ and remote sensing methods. We explore how mountains disturb the surface winds on our planet, including mountaintop winds, severe downslope winds, barrier jets, gap jets, wakes, thermally generated winds, and cold pools. We consider the variety of physical mechanisms by which mountains modify precipitation patterns in different climate zones. We discuss the vertical propagation of mountain waves through the troposphere into the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. Finally, we look at how mountains distort the global-scale westerly winds that circle the poles and how varying ice sheets and mountain uplift and erosion over geologic time may have contributed to climate change.

Description: Yanai and coauthors utilized the meteorological data collected from a sounding network to present a pioneering work in 1973 on thermodynamic budgets, which are referred to as the apparent heat source (Q1) and apparent moisture sink (Q2). Latent heating (LH) is one of the most dominant terms in Q1. Yanai’s paper motivated the development of satellite-based LH algorithms and provided a theoretical background for imposing large-scale advective forcing into cloud-resolving models (CRMs). These CRM-simulated LH and Q1 data have been used to generate the look-up tables in Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) LH algorithms. A set of algorithms developed for retrieving LH profiles from TRMM-based rainfall profiles is described and evaluated, including details concerning their intrinsic space–time resolutions. Included in the paper are results from a variety of validation analyses that define the uncertainty of the LH profile estimates. Also, examples of how TRMM-retrieved LH profiles have been used to understand the life cycle of the MJO and improve the predictions of global weather and climate models as well as comparisons with large-scale analyses are provided. Areas for further improvement of the TRMM products are discussed.

Description: The stratosphere contains ~17% of Earth’s atmospheric mass, but its existence was unknown until 1902. In the following decades our knowledge grew gradually as more observations of the stratosphere were made. In 1913 the ozone layer, which protects life from harmful ultraviolet radiation, was discovered. From ozone and water vapor observations, a first basic idea of a stratospheric general circulation was put forward. Since the 1950s our knowledge of the stratosphere and mesosphere has expanded rapidly, and the importance of this region in the climate system has become clear. With more observations, several new stratospheric phenomena have been discovered: the quasi-biennial oscillation, sudden stratospheric warmings, the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole, and surface weather impacts of stratospheric variability. None of these phenomena were anticipated by theory. Advances in theory have more often than not been prompted by unexplained phenomena seen in new stratospheric observations. From the 1960s onward, the importance of dynamical processes and the coupled stratosphere–troposphere circulation was realized. Since approximately 2000, better representations of the stratosphere—and even the mesosphere—have been included in climate and weather forecasting models. We now know that in order to produce accurate seasonal weather forecasts, and to predict long-term changes in climate and the future evolution of the ozone layer, models with a well-resolved stratosphere with realistic dynamics and chemistry are necessary.

Description: Satellite meteorology is a relatively new branch of the atmospheric sciences. The field emerged in the late 1950s during the Cold War and built on the advances in rocketry after World War II. In less than 70 years, satellite observations have transformed the way scientists observe and study Earth. This paper discusses some of the key advances in our understanding of the energy and water cycles, weather forecasting, and atmospheric composition enabled by satellite observations. While progress truly has been an international achievement, in accord with a monograph observing the centennial of the American Meteorological Society, as well as limited space, the emphasis of this chapter is on the U.S. satellite effort.

Description: The authors survey a series of modeling studies that have examined the influences that cloud microphysical processes can have on tropical cyclone (TC) motion, the strength and breadth of the wind field, inner-core diabatic heating asymmetries, outer-core convective activity, and the characteristics of the TC anvil cloud. These characteristics are sensitive to the microphysical parameterization (MP) in large part owing to the cloud-radiative forcing (CRF), the interaction of hydrometeors with radiation. The most influential component of CRF is that due to absorption and emission of longwave radiation in the anvil, which via gentle lifting directly encourages the more extensive convective activity that then leads to a radial expansion of the TC wind field. On a curved Earth, the magnitude of the outer winds helps determine the speed and direction of TC motion via the beta drift. CRF also influences TC motion by determining how convective asymmetries develop in the TC inner core. Further improvements in TC forecasting may require improved understanding and representation of cloud-radiative processes in operational models, and more comprehensive comparisons with observations are clearly needed.

Description: The Asian monsoon is a planetary-scale circulation system powered by the release of latent heat, but important features of deep convection and rainfall distribution cannot be adequately represented by the large-scale patterns. This is mainly due to the strong influences of terrain that are important across a wide range of horizontal scales, especially over the Maritime Continent where the complex terrain has a dominant effect on the behavior of convective rainfall during the boreal winter monsoon. This chapter is a review and summary of published results on the effects on monsoon convection due to interactions between the Maritime Continent terrain and large-scale transient systems. The Maritime Continent topographic features strongly affect both the demarcation of the boreal summer and winter monsoon regimes and the asymmetric seasonal marches during the transition seasons. In the western part of the region, the complex interactions that lead to variability in deep convection are primarily controlled by the cold surges and the synoptic-scale Borneo vortex. The Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) reduces the frequency of weaker surges through an interference with their structure. It also influences convection, particularly on the diurnal cycle and when synoptic activities are weak. When both surges and the Borneo vortex are present, interactions between these circulations with the terrain can cause the strongest convection, which has included Typhoon Vamei (2001), which is the only observed tropical cyclone that developed within 1.5° of the equator. The cold surges are driven by midlatitude pressure rises associated with the movement of the Siberian high. Rapid strengthening of surge northeasterly winds can be explained as the tropical response via a geostrophic adjustment process to the pressure forcing in the form of an equatorial Rossby wave group. Dispersion of meridional modes leads to a northeast–southwest orientation that allows the surge to stream downstream through the similarly oriented South China Sea. This evolution leads to a cross-equatorial return flow and a cyclonic circulation at the equator, and thus a mechanism for equatorial cyclogenesis. Although the narrow width of the southern South China Sea facilitates strengthening of the cold surge, it also severely restricts the likelihood of cyclone development so that Vamei remains to be the only typhoon observed in the equatorial South China Sea. Climate variations from El Niño–Southern Oscillation to climate change may impact the interactions between the large-scale motion and Maritime Continent terrain because they lead to changes in the mean flow. The thermodynamic effects on the interaction between MJO and the monsoon surges and Borneo vortex over the complex terrain also need to be addressed. These and other questions such as any possible changes in the likelihood of equatorial tropical cyclogenesis as a result of climate change are all important areas for future research.