ALBERT

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 1092–1097, doi:10.1175/JPO3045.1.

Description: The impact of the observed relationship between sea surface temperature and surface wind stress on baroclinic instability in the ocean is explored using linear theory and a nonlinear model. A simple parameterization of the influence of sea surface temperature on wind stress is used to derive a surface boundary condition for the vertical velocity at the base of the oceanic Ekman layer. This boundary condition is applied to the classic linear, quasigeostrophic stability problem for a uniformly sheared flow originally studied by Eady in the 1940s. The results demonstrate that for a wind directed from warm water toward cold water, the coupling acts to enhance the growth rate, and increase the wavelength, of the most unstable wave. Winds in the opposite sense reduce the growth rate and decrease the wavelength of the most unstable wave. For representative coupling strengths, the change in growth rate can be as large as ±O(50%). This effect is largest for shallow, strongly stratified, low-latitude flows.

Description: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-05-1-0300.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 1177-1191, doi:10.1175/jpo3054.1.

Description: The stability of baroclinic Rossby waves in large ocean basins is examined, and the quasigeostrophic (QG) results of LaCasce and Pedlosky are generalized. First, stability equations are derived for perturbations on large-scale waves, using the two-layer shallow-water system. These equations resemble the QG stability equations, except that they retain the variation of the internal deformation radius with latitude. The equations are solved numerically for different initial conditions through eigenmode calculations and time stepping. The fastest-growing eigenmodes are intensified at high latitudes, and the slower-growing modes are intensified at lower latitudes. All of the modes have meridional scales and growth times that are comparable to the deformation radius in the latitude range where the eigenmode is intensified. This is what one would expect if one had applied QG theory in latitude bands. The evolution of large-scale waves was then simulated using the Regional Ocean Modeling System primitive equation model. The results are consistent with the theoretical predictions, with deformation-scale perturbations growing at rates inversely proportional to the local deformation radius. The waves succumb to the perturbations at the mid- to high latitudes, but are able to cross the basin at low latitudes before doing so. Also, the barotropic waves produced by the instability propagate faster than the baroclinic long-wave speed, which may explain the discrepancy in speeds noted by Chelton and Schlax.

Description: PEI was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Norwegian Research Council, JHL was supported under the Norwegian NOCLIM II program, and JP was partly supported by NSF OCE 0451086.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 2158–2171, doi:10.1175/jpo3100.1.

Description: The triad instability of the large-scale, first-mode, baroclinic Rossby waves is studied in the context of the planetary scale when the Coriolis parameter is to its lowest order varying with latitude. Accordingly, rather than remain constant as in quasigeostrophic theory, the deformation radius also changes with latitude, yielding new and interesting features to the propagation and triad instability processes. On the planetary scale, baroclinic waves vary their meridional wavenumbers along group velocity rays while they conserve both frequencies and zonal wavenumbers. The amplitudes of both barotropic and baroclinic waves would change with latitude along a ray path in the same way that the Coriolis parameter does if effects of the nonlinear interaction are ignored. The triad interaction for a specific triad is localized within a small latitudinal band where the resonance conditions are satisfied and quasigeostrophic theory is applicable locally. Using the growth rate from that theory as a measure, at each latitude along the ray path of the basic wave, a barotropic wave and a secondary baroclinic wave are picked up to form the most unstable triad and the distribution of this maximum growth rate is examined. It is found to increase southward under the assumption that triad interactions do not cause a noticeable decrease in the quantity of the basic wave’s amplitude divided by the Coriolis parameter. Different barotropic waves that maximize the growth rate at different latitudes have almost the same meridional length scale, on the order of the deformation radius. With many rays starting from different latitudes on the eastern boundary and with wavenumbers on each of them satisfying the no-normal-flow condition, the resulting two-dimensional distribution of the growth rate is a complicated function of the relative relations of zonal wavenumbers or frequencies on different rays and the orientation of the eastern boundary. In general, the growth rate is largest on rays originating to the north.

Description: This research was supported in part by NSF OCE 0451086 and by the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Physical Oceanography.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 392–409, doi:10.1175/JCLI3620.1.

Description: Data from the Eastern Pacific Investigation of Climate Studies (EPIC) mooring array are used to evaluate the annual cycle of surface cloud forcing in the far eastern Pacific stratus cloud deck/cold tongue/intertropical convergence zone complex. Data include downwelling surface solar and longwave radiation from 10 EPIC-enhanced Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) moorings from 8°S, 95°W to 12°N, 95°W, and the Woods Hole Improved Meteorology (IMET) mooring in the stratus cloud deck region at 20°S, 85°W. Surface cloud forcing is defined as the observed downwelling radiation at the surface minus the clear-sky value. Solar cloud forcing and longwave cloud forcing are anticorrelated at all latitudes from 12°N to 20°S: clouds tended to reduce the downward solar radiation and to a lesser extent increase the downward longwave radiation at the surface. The relative amount of solar radiation reduction and longwave increase depends upon cloud type and varies with latitude. A statistical relationship between solar and longwave surface cloud forcing is developed for rainy and dry periods and for the full record length in six latitudinal regions: northeast tropical warm pool, ITCZ, frontal zone, cold tongue, southern, and stratus deck regions. The buoy cloud forcing observations and empirical relations are compared with the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) radiative flux data (FD) dataset and are used as benchmarks to evaluate surface cloud forcing in the NCEP Reanalysis 2 (NCEP2) and 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40). ERA-40 and NCEP2 cloud forcing (both solar and longwave) showed large discrepancies with observations, being too large in the ITCZ and equatorial regions and too weak under the stratus deck at 20°S and north to the equator during the cool season from July to December. In particular the NCEP2 cloud forcing at the equator was nearly identical to the ITCZ region and thus had significantly larger solar cloud forcing and smaller longwave cloud forcing than observed. The net result of the solar and longwave cloud forcing deviations is that there is too little radiative warming in the ITCZ and southward to 8°S during the warm season and too much radiative warming under the stratus deck at 20°S and northward to the equator during the cold season.

Description: This research was supported by grants from the NOAA Office of Global Programs, Pan American Climate Studies.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 87 (2006): 1223–1225, doi:10.1175/BAMS-87-9-1223.

Description: The importance of decadal climate variability (DCV) research is being increasingly recognized, including by international research programs such as the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and the U.S. National Research Council. This brief article (workshop presentations available online at www.DecVar.org/auditorium.php) summarizes a consensus view of a research community workshop attended by approximately 45 scientists. Gaps in our knowledge of DCV and its societal impacts were identified, as were areas of needed research and anticipated benefits of research. It is a major challenge to implement recommendations of this and other such workshops on climate research in this era of declining earth science budgets. Therefore, a phased implementation is recommended, with highest priority recommendations outlined in a sidebar to this summary.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 3033–3054, doi:10.1175/JCLI3783.1.

Description: A new 3D global coupled carbon–climate model is presented in the framework of the Community Climate System Model (CSM-1.4). The biogeochemical module includes explicit land water–carbon coupling, dynamic carbon allocation to leaf, root, and wood, prognostic leaf phenology, multiple soil and detrital carbon pools, oceanic iron limitation, a full ocean iron cycle, and 3D atmospheric CO2 transport. A sequential spinup strategy is utilized to minimize the coupling shock and drifts in land and ocean carbon inventories. A stable, 1000-yr control simulation [global annual mean surface temperature ±0.10 K and atmospheric CO2 ± 1.2 ppm (1σ)] is presented with no flux adjustment in either physics or biogeochemistry. The control simulation compares reasonably well against observations for key annual mean and seasonal carbon cycle metrics; regional biases in coupled model physics, however, propagate clearly into biogeochemical error patterns. Simulated interannual-to-centennial variability in atmospheric CO2 is dominated by terrestrial carbon flux variability, ±0.69 Pg C yr−1 (1σ global net annual mean), which in turn reflects primarily regional changes in net primary production modulated by moisture stress. Power spectra of global CO2 fluxes are white on time scales beyond a few years, and thus most of the variance is concentrated at high frequencies (time scale 〈4 yr). Model variability in air–sea CO2 fluxes, ±0.10 Pg C yr−1 (1σ global annual mean), is generated by variability in sea surface temperature, wind speed, export production, and mixing/upwelling. At low frequencies (time scale 〉20 yr), global net ocean CO2 flux is strongly anticorrelated (0.7–0.95) with the net CO2 flux from land; the ocean tends to damp (20%–25%) slow variations in atmospheric CO2 generated by the terrestrial biosphere. The intrinsic, unforced natural variability in land and ocean carbon storage is the “noise” that complicates the detection and mechanistic attribution of contemporary anthropogenic carbon sinks.

Description: This work was supported by NCAR, NSF ATM-9987457, NASA EOS-IDS Grant NAG5-9514, NASA Carbon Cycle Program Grant NAG5-11200, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory LDRD, and the WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 2122–2143, doi:10.1175/JCLI3761.1.

Description: The Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) has recently been developed and released to the climate community. CCSM3 is a coupled climate model with components representing the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land surface connected by a flux coupler. CCSM3 is designed to produce realistic simulations over a wide range of spatial resolutions, enabling inexpensive simulations lasting several millennia or detailed studies of continental-scale dynamics, variability, and climate change. This paper will show results from the configuration used for climate-change simulations with a T85 grid for the atmosphere and land and a grid with approximately 1° resolution for the ocean and sea ice. The new system incorporates several significant improvements in the physical parameterizations. The enhancements in the model physics are designed to reduce or eliminate several systematic biases in the mean climate produced by previous editions of CCSM. These include new treatments of cloud processes, aerosol radiative forcing, land–atmosphere fluxes, ocean mixed layer processes, and sea ice dynamics. There are significant improvements in the sea ice thickness, polar radiation budgets, tropical sea surface temperatures, and cloud radiative effects. CCSM3 can produce stable climate simulations of millennial duration without ad hoc adjustments to the fluxes exchanged among the component models. Nonetheless, there are still systematic biases in the ocean–atmosphere fluxes in coastal regions west of continents, the spectrum of ENSO variability, the spatial distribution of precipitation in the tropical oceans, and continental precipitation and surface air temperatures. Work is under way to extend CCSM to a more accurate and comprehensive model of the earth's climate system.

Description: We would like to acknowledge the substantial contributions to and support for the CCSM project from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2005. 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 22 (2005): 583–591, doi:10.1175/JTECH1731.1.

Description: The algorithm used to transform velocity signals from beam coordinates to earth coordinates in an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) relies on the assumption that the currents are uniform over the horizontal distance separating the beams. This condition may be violated by (nonlinear) internal waves, which can have wavelengths as small as 100–200 m. In this case, the standard algorithm combines velocities measured at different phases of a wave and produces horizontal velocities that increasingly differ from true velocities with distance from the ADCP. Observations made in Massachusetts Bay show that currents measured with a bottom-mounted upward-looking ADCP during periods when short-wavelength internal waves are present differ significantly from currents measured by point current meters, except very close to the instrument. These periods are flagged with high error velocities by the standard ADCP algorithm. In this paper measurements from the four spatially diverging beams and the backscatter intensity signal are used to calculate the propagation direction and celerity of the internal waves. Once this information is known, a modified beam-to-earth transformation that combines appropriately lagged beam measurements can be used to obtain current estimates in earth coordinates that compare well with pointwise measurements.

Description: A. Scotti was partially supported by ONR Grants N00014-03-1-0553 and N00014-01-1- 0172, B. Butman and P. Alexander by the U.S. Geological Survey, and R. Beardsley by the WHOI Smith Chair and ONR Grant N00014-98-1-0210. S. Anderson received partial support from ONR (Grant N00014-97- 1-0158). The Massachusetts Bay Internal Wave Experiment was jointly supported by ONR and USGS.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 3337–3353, doi:10.1175/JCLI3800.1.

Description: Eleven coupled climate–carbon cycle models used a common protocol to study the coupling between climate change and the carbon cycle. The models were forced by historical emissions and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 anthropogenic emissions of CO2 for the 1850–2100 time period. For each model, two simulations were performed in order to isolate the impact of climate change on the land and ocean carbon cycle, and therefore the climate feedback on the atmospheric CO2 concentration growth rate. There was unanimous agreement among the models that future climate change will reduce the efficiency of the earth system to absorb the anthropogenic carbon perturbation. A larger fraction of anthropogenic CO2 will stay airborne if climate change is accounted for. By the end of the twenty-first century, this additional CO2 varied between 20 and 200 ppm for the two extreme models, the majority of the models lying between 50 and 100 ppm. The higher CO2 levels led to an additional climate warming ranging between 0.1° and 1.5°C. All models simulated a negative sensitivity for both the land and the ocean carbon cycle to future climate. However, there was still a large uncertainty on the magnitude of these sensitivities. Eight models attributed most of the changes to the land, while three attributed it to the ocean. Also, a majority of the models located the reduction of land carbon uptake in the Tropics. However, the attribution of the land sensitivity to changes in net primary productivity versus changes in respiration is still subject to debate; no consensus emerged among the models.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 6153–6169, doi:10.1175/JCLI3970.1.

Description: The present study used a new net surface heat flux (Qnet) product obtained from the Objective Analyzed Air–Sea Fluxes (OAFlux) project and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) to examine two specific issues—one is to which degree Qnet controls seasonal variations of sea surface temperature (SST) in the tropical Atlantic Ocean (20°S–20°N, east of 60°W), and the other is whether the physical relation can serve as a measure to evaluate the physical representation of a heat flux product. To better address the two issues, the study included the analysis of three additional heat flux products: the Southampton Oceanographic Centre (SOC) heat flux analysis based on ship reports, and the model fluxes from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction–National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP–NCAR) reanalysis and the 40-yr European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA-40). The study also uses the monthly subsurface temperature fields from the World Ocean Atlas to help analyze the seasonal changes of the mixed layer depth (hMLD). The study showed that the tropical Atlantic sector could be divided into two regimes based on the influence level of Qnet. SST variability poleward of 5°S and 10°N is dominated by the annual cycle of Qnet. In these regions the warming (cooling) of the sea surface is highly correlated with the increased (decreased) Qnet confined in a relatively shallow (deep) hMLD. The seasonal evolution of SST variability is well predicted by simply relating the local Qnet with a variable hMLD. On the other hand, the influence of Qnet diminishes in the deep Tropics within 5°S and 10°N and ocean dynamic processes play a dominant role. The dynamics-induced changes in SST are most evident along the two belts, one of which is located on the equator and the other off the equator at about 3°N in the west, which tilts to about 10°N near the northwestern African coast. The study also showed that if the degree of consistency between the correlation relationships of Qnet, hMLD, and SST variability serves as a measure of the quality of the Qnet product, then the Qnet from OAFlux + ISCCP and ERA-40 are most physically representative, followed by SOC. The NCEP–NCAR Qnet is least representative. It should be noted that the Qnet from OAFlux + ISCCP and ERA-40 have a quite different annual mean pattern. OAFlux + ISCCP agrees with SOC in that the tropical Atlantic sector gains heat from the atmosphere on the annual mean basis, where the ERA-40 and the NCEP–NCAR model reanalyses indicate that positive Qnet occurs only in the narrow equatorial band and in the eastern portion of the tropical basin. Nevertheless, seasonal variances of the Qnet from OAFlux + ISCCP and ERA-40 are very similar once the respective mean is removed, which explains why the two agree with each other in accounting for the seasonal variability of SST. In summary, the study suggests that an accurate estimation of surface heat flux is crucially important for understanding and predicting SST fluctuations in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. It also suggests that future emphasis on improving the surface heat flux estimation should be placed more on reducing the mean bias.

Description: This study is support by the NOAA CLIVAR Atlantic under Grant NA06GP0453 and NOAA Climate observations and Climate Change and Data Detection under Grant NA17RJ1223.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 5366–5387, doi:10.1175/JCLI3892.1.

Description: The oceanic Ekman transport and pumping are among the most important parameters in studying the ocean general circulation and its variability. Upwelling due to the Ekman transport divergence has been identified as a leading mechanism for the seasonal to interannual variability of the upper-ocean heat content in many parts of the World Ocean, especially along coasts and the equator. Meanwhile, the Ekman pumping is the primary mechanism that drives basin-scale circulations in subtropical and subpolar oceans. In those ice-free oceans, the Ekman transport and pumping rate are calculated using the surface wind stress. In the ice-covered Arctic Ocean, the surface momentum flux comes from both air–water and ice–water stresses. The data required to compute these stresses are now available from satellite and buoy observations. But no basin-scale calculation of the Ekman transport in the Arctic Ocean has been done to date. In this study, a suite of satellite and buoy observations of ice motion, ice concentration, surface wind, etc., will be used to calculate the daily Ekman transport over the whole Arctic Ocean from 1978 to 2003 on a 25-km resolution. The seasonal variability and its relationship to the surface forcing fields will be examined. Meanwhile, the contribution of the Ekman transport to the seasonal fluxes of heat and salt to the Arctic Ocean mixed layer will be discussed. It was found that the greatest seasonal variations of Ekman transports of heat and salt occur in the southern Beaufort Sea in the fall and early winter when a strong anticyclonic wind and ice motion are present. The Ekman pumping velocity in the interior Beaufort Sea reaches as high as 10 cm day−1 in November while coastal upwelling is even stronger. The contributions of the Ekman transport to the heat and salt flux in the mixed layer are also considerable in the region.

Description: This study has been supported by NASA Cryospheric Science Program (Grant NNG04GP34G) and by the NSF Office of Polar Program (Grant OPP0424074).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2005. 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 22 (2005): 1267–1281, doi:10.1175/JTECH1760.1.

Description: The focus of this paper is on the development of methodology for short-term (1–3 days) oceanic bioluminescence (BL) predictions and the optimization of spatial and temporal bioluminescence sampling strategies. The approach is based on predictions of bioluminescence with an advection–diffusion–reaction (tracer) model with velocities and diffusivities from a circulation model. In previous research, it was shown that short-term changes in some of the salient features in coastal bioluminescence can be explained and predicted by using this approach. At the same time, it was demonstrated that optimization of bioluminescence sampling prior to the forecast is critical for successful short-term BL predictions with the tracer model. In the present paper, the adjoint to the tracer model is used to study the sensitivity of the modeled bioluminescence distributions to the sampling strategies for BL. The locations and times of bioluminescence sampling prior to the forecast are determined by using the adjoint-based sensitivity maps. The approach is tested with bioluminescence observations collected during August 2000 and 2003 in the Monterey Bay, California, area. During August 2000, BL surveys were collected during a strong wind relaxation event, while in August 2003, BL surveys were conducted during an extended (longer than a week) upwelling-favorable event. The numerical bioluminescence predictability experiments demonstrated a close agreement between observed and model-predicted short-term spatial and temporal changes of the coastal bioluminescence.

Description: This work has been supported by the Ocean Optics and Biology and Physical Oceanography Programs of the Office of Naval Research. Shulman’s support is through the NRL “Use of a Circulation Model to Enhance Predictability of Bioluminescence in the Coastal Ocean” project sponsored by the Office of Naval Research.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 5100–5121, doi:10.1175/JCLI3902.1.

Description: Three interrelated climate phenomena are at the center of the Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) Atlantic research: tropical Atlantic variability (TAV), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC). These phenomena produce a myriad of impacts on society and the environment on seasonal, interannual, and longer time scales through variability manifest as coherent fluctuations in ocean and land temperature, rainfall, and extreme events. Improved understanding of this variability is essential for assessing the likely range of future climate fluctuations and the extent to which they may be predictable, as well as understanding the potential impact of human-induced climate change. CLIVAR is addressing these issues through prioritized and integrated plans for short-term and sustained observations, basin-scale reanalysis, and modeling and theoretical investigations of the coupled Atlantic climate system and its links to remote regions. In this paper, a brief review of the state of understanding of Atlantic climate variability and achievements to date is provided. Considerable discussion is given to future challenges related to building and sustaining observing systems, developing synthesis strategies to support understanding and attribution of observed change, understanding sources of predictability, and developing prediction systems in order to meet the scientific objectives of the CLIVAR Atlantic program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2006. 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 19 (2006): 6391–6408, doi:10.1175/JCLI3976.1.

Description: A novel mechanism of decadal midlatitude coupled variability, which crucially depends on the nonlinear dynamics of both the atmosphere and the ocean, is presented. The coupled model studied involves quasigeostrophic atmospheric and oceanic components, which communicate with each other via a constant-depth oceanic mixed layer. A series of coupled and uncoupled experiments show that the decadal coupled mode is active across parameter ranges that allow the bimodality of the atmospheric zonal flow to coexist with oceanic turbulence. The latter is most intense in the regions of inertial recirculation (IR). Bimodality is associated with the existence of two distinct anomalously persistent zonal-flow modes, which are characterized by different latitudes of the atmospheric jet stream. The IR reorganizations caused by transitions of the atmosphere from its high- to low-latitude state and vice versa create sea surface temperature anomalies that tend to induce transition to the opposite atmospheric state. The decadal–interdecadal time scale of the resulting oscillation is set by the IR adjustment; the latter depends most sensitively on the oceanic bottom drag. The period T of the nonlinear oscillation is 7–25 yr for the range of parameters explored, with the most realistic parameter values yielding T ≈ 20 yr. Aside from this nonlinear oscillation, an interannual Rossby wave mode is present in all coupled experiments. This coupled mode depends neither on atmospheric bimodality, nor on ocean eddy dynamics; it is analogous to the mode found previously in a channel configuration. Its time scale in the model with a closed ocean basin is set by cross-basin wave propagation and equals 3–5 yr for a basin width comparable with the North Atlantic.

Description: This research was supported by NSF Grant OCE-02-221066 (all coauthors) and DOE Grant DE-FG-03-01ER63260 (MG and SK).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1245-1262, doi:10.1175/JPO2713.1.

Description: Evidence is presented that lateral dispersion on scales of 1–10 km in the stratified waters of the continental shelf may be significantly enhanced by stirring by small-scale geostrophic motions caused by patches of mixed fluid adjusting in the aftermath of diapycnal mixing events. Dye-release experiments conducted during the recent Coastal Mixing and Optics (CMO) experiment provide estimates of diapycnal and lateral dispersion. Microstructure observations made during these experiments showed patchy turbulence on vertical scales of 1–10 m and horizontal scales of a few hundred meters to a few kilometers. Momentum scaling and a simple random walk formulation were used to estimate the effective lateral dispersion caused by motions resulting from lateral adjustment following episodic mixing events. It is predicted that lateral dispersion is largest when the scale of mixed patches is on the order of the internal Rossby radius of deformation, which seems to have been the case for CMO. For parameter values relevant to CMO, lower-bound estimates of the effective lateral diffusivity by this mechanism ranged from 0.1 to 1 m2s−1. Revised estimates after accounting for the possibility of long-lived motions were an order of magnitude larger and ranged from 1 to 10 m2s−1. The predicted dispersion is large enough to explain the observed lateral dispersion in all four CMO dye-release experiments examined.

Description: The Coastal Mixing and Optics dye studies were funded by the Office of Naval Research under Grants N00014-95-1-0633 (tracer experiments) and N00014-95-1-1063 (AASERT fellowship). Additional analysis was also performed under ONR Grant N00014-01-1-0984.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 569–583, doi:10.1175/JPO2679.1.

Description: When the salty and heavy water of the Red Sea exits from the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, it continues downslope into the Gulf of Aden mainly along two channels. The 130-km-long “Northern Channel” (NC) is topographically confined and is typically only 5 km wide. In it, the Red Sea plume shows unanticipated patterns of vertical structure, turbulent mixing, and entrainment. Above the seafloor a 25–120-m-thick weakly stratified layer shows little dilution along the channel. Hence this bottom layer undergoes only weak entrainment. In contrast, a 35–285-m-thick interfacial layer shows stronger entrainment and is shown in a companion paper to undergo vigorous turbulent mixing. It is thus the interface that exhibits the bulk of entrainment of the Red Sea plume in the NC. The interfacial layer also carries most of the overall plume transport, increasingly so with downstream distance. The “Southern Channel” (SC) is wider than the NC and is accessed from the latter by a sill about 33 m above the floor of the NC. Entrainment into the bottom layer of the SC is diagnosed to be strong near the entry into the SC such that the near-bottom density and salinity are smaller in the SC than in the NC at the same distance from Bab el Mandeb. In comparison with winter conditions, the authors encountered weaker outflow with shallower equilibration depths during the summer cruise. Bulk Froude numbers computed for the whole plume varied within the range 0.2–1. Local maxima occurred in relatively steep channel sections and coincided with locations of significant entrainment.

Description: The Red Sea Outflow Experiment was funded by the National Science Foundation under Contracts OCE-9819506 and OCE-9818464. Additional support was provided to the “Climate Process Team Gravity Currents” under OCE-0336799.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1037-1053, doi:10.1175/JPO2734.1.

Description: High-resolution hydrographic and velocity measurements across the East Greenland shelf break south of Denmark Strait have revealed an intense, narrow current banked against the upper continental slope. This is believed to be the result of dense water cascading over the shelf edge and entraining ambient water. The current has been named the East Greenland Spill Jet. It resides beneath the East Greenland/Irminger Current and transports roughly 2 Sverdrups of water equatorward. Strong vertical mixing occurs during the spilling, although the entrainment farther downstream is minimal. A vorticity analysis reveals that the increase in cyclonic relative vorticity within the jet is partly balanced by tilting vorticity, resulting in a sharp front in potential vorticity reminiscent of the Gulf Stream. The other components of the Irminger Sea boundary current system are described, including a presentation of absolute transports.

Description: This project was funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE 00-02492.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1305-1317, doi:10.1175/JPO2744.1.

Description: An idealized theoretical model is developed for the acceleration of a two-dimensional, stratified current over a uniformly sloping bottom, driven by an imposed alongshelf pressure gradient and taking into account the effects of buoyancy advection in the bottom boundary layer. Both downwelling and upwelling pressure gradients are considered. For a specified pressure gradient, the model response depends primarily on the Burger number S = Nα/f, where N is the initial buoyancy frequency, α is the bottom slope, and f is the Coriolis parameter. Without stratification (S = 0), buoyancy advection is absent, and the alongshelf flow accelerates until bottom stress balances the imposed pressure gradient. The e-folding time scale to reach this steady state is the friction time, h/r, where h is the water depth and r is a linear bottom friction coefficient. With stratification (S ≠ 0), buoyancy advection in the bottom boundary layer produces vertical shear, which prevents the bottom stress from becoming large enough to balance the imposed pressure gradient for many friction time scales. Thus, the alongshelf flow continues to accelerate, potentially producing large velocities. The acceleration increases rapidly with increasing S, such that even relatively weak stratification (S 〉 0.2) has a major impact. These results are supported by numerical model calculations.

Description: Funding was provided by the Division of Ocean Sciences of the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE-0241292. DCC also received some support from the Office of Naval Research under Grants N00014-00-1-0210 and N00014-02-1-0767.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1263–1278, doi:10.1175/JPO2743.1.

Description: Multiple-gyre ocean models have a weaker mean subtropical circulation than single-gyre calculations with the same viscosity and subtropical forcing. Traditionally, this reduction in circulation is attributed to an intergyre eddy vorticity flux that cancels some of the wind input, part of which does not require a Lagrangian mass exchange (theory of dissipative meandering). Herein the intergyre eddy vorticity flux is shown to be a controlling factor in barotropic models at high Reynolds number only with exactly antisymmetric gyres and slip boundary conditions. Almost no intergyre flux occurs when no-slip boundary conditions are used, yet the subtropical gyre is still significantly weaker in multiple-gyre calculations. Sinuous modes of instability present only in multiple gyres are shown here to vastly increase the eddy vorticity transport efficiency. This increase in efficiency reduces the mean circulation necessary for equilibrium. With slip boundary conditions, the intergyre eddy transport is possibly much larger. However, with wind forcing relevant for the ocean—two unequal gyres—a mean flow flux of vorticity rather than an eddy flux between the regions of opposing wind forcing is increasingly important with increasing Reynolds number. A physical rationalization of the differing results is provided by diagnosis of the equilibrium vorticity budget and eddy transport efficiency. Calculations varying 1) boundary conditions, 2) sources and sinks of vorticity, 3) eddy transport efficiency, and 4) the degree of symmetry of the gyres are discussed.

Description: The author was supported by an ONR-supported NDSEG fellowship, an MIT Presidential Fellowship, NSF OCE 9910654, a Princeton University/GFDL fellowship, and a NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellowship managed by UCAR.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1568–1592, doi:10.1175/JPO2775.1.

Description: Rotating two-layer exchange flow over a sill in a strait separating two relatively deep and wide basins is analyzed. Upstream of the sill in the deep upstream basin, the infinitely deep dense lower layer is assumed to be inactive, while the relatively thin upper layer flowing away from the sill forms a detached boundary current in the upstream basin. This analysis emphasizes the importance of this upstream boundary current, incorporating its width as a key parameter in a formalism for deducing the volume exchange rate and discriminating between maximal and submaximal states. Hence, even for narrow straits in which rotation does not dominate the dynamics within the strait, the importance of rotation in the wide upstream basin can be exploited. It is shown that the maximal allowable exchange transport through straits wider than 1½ Rossby deformation radii increases as rotation increases, unlike for smaller rotations, where the exchange decreases as rotation increases. The theory is applied to the exchange flow through the Strait of Gibraltar. This application illustrates how images of the oceans taken from space showing the width of the upstream flow, in this case a space shuttle photograph, might be used to determine the exchange transport through a strait. Maximal exchange conditions in the Strait of Gibraltar are predicted to apply at the time the space shuttle photograph was taken.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 2487-2500, doi:10.1175/JPO2832.1.

Description: The buoyancy-driven circulation of simple two-layer models on the β plane is studied in order to examine the role of beta in determining the magnitude and structure of the vertical motions forced in response to surface heating and cooling. Both analytical and numerical approaches are used to describe the change in circulation pattern and strength as a consequence of the planetary vorticity gradient. The physics is quasigeostrophic at lowest order but is sensitive to small nonquasigeostrophic mass fluxes across the boundary of the basin. The height of the interface between the two layers serves as an analog of temperature, and the vertical velocity at the interface consists of a cross-isopycnal velocity, modeled in terms of a relaxation to a prescribed interface height, as well as an adiabatic representation of eddy thickness fluxes parameterized as lateral diffusion of interface displacement. In the numerical model the lateral eddy diffusion of heat is explicitly represented by a resolved eddy field. In the plausibly more realistic case, when the lateral diffusion of buoyancy dominates the diffusion of momentum, the major vertical velocities occur at the boundary of the basin as in earlier f-plane studies. The effect of the planetary vorticity gradient is to intensify the sinking at the western wall and to enhance the magnitude of that sinking with respect to the f-plane models. The vertical mass flux in the Sverdrup interior exactly balances the vertical flux in the region of the strong horizontal transport of the western boundary current, leaving the net flux to occur in a very narrow region near the western boundary tucked well within the western boundary current. On the other hand, if the lateral diffusion of heat is arbitrarily and unrealistically eliminated, the vertical mass flux is forced to occur in the interior. The circulation pattern is extremely sensitive to small net inflows or outflows across the basin perimeter. The cross-basin flux determines the interface height on the basin’s eastern boundary and affects the circulation pattern across the entire basin.

Description: This research was supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation OCE-9901654 (JP) and OCE-0240978, and Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-03-0338 (MAS).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 2187–2203, doi:10.1175/JPO2800.1.

Description: The effect of breaking-wave-generated turbulence on the mean circulation, turbulence, and bottom stress in the surf zone is poorly understood. A one-dimensional vertical coupled turbulence (k–ε) and mean-flow model is developed that incorporates the effect of wave breaking with a time-dependent surface turbulence flux and uses existing (published) model closures. No model parameters are tuned to optimize model–data agreement. The model qualitatively reproduces the mean dissipation and production during the most energetic breaking-wave conditions in 4.5-m water depth off of a sandy beach and slightly underpredicts the mean alongshore current. By modeling a cross-shore transect case example from the Duck94 field experiment, the observed surf-zone dissipation depth scaling and the observed mean alongshore current (although slightly underpredicted) are generally reproduced. Wave breaking significantly reduces the modeled vertical shear, suggesting that surf-zone bottom stress cannot be estimated by fitting a logarithmic current profile to alongshore current observations. Model-inferred drag coefficients follow parameterizations (Manning–Strickler) that depend on the bed roughness and inversely on the water depth, although the inverse depth dependence is likely a proxy for some other effect such as wave breaking. Variations in the bed roughness and the percentage of breaking-wave energy entering the water column have a comparable effect on the mean alongshore current and drag coefficient. However, covarying the wave height, forcing, and dissipation and bed roughness separately results in an alongshore current (drag coefficient) only weakly (strongly) dependent on the bed roughness because of the competing effects of increased turbulence, wave forcing, and orbital wave velocities.

Description: This work was funded by NSF, ONR, and NOPP.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 238-254, doi:10.1175/JPO2848.1.

Description: The seasonal variation of the North Equatorial Countercurrent (NECC) in the tropical Atlantic Ocean is investigated by using a linear, one-layer reduced-gravity ocean model and by analyzing sea surface height (SSH) data from Ocean Topography Experiment (TOPEX)/Poseidon (T/P) altimeters. The T/P data indicate that the seasonal variability of the NECC geostrophic transport, between 3° and 10°N, is dominated by SSH changes in the southern flank of the current. Since the southern boundary of the NECC is located partially within the equatorial waveguide, the SSH variation there can be influenced considerably by the equatorial dynamics. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the wind stress forcing along the equator is the leading driver for the seasonal cycle of the NECC transport. The wind stress curl in the NECC region is an important but smaller contributor. This hypothesis is tested by several sensitivity experiments that are designed to separate the two forcing mechanisms. In the first sensitivity run, a wind stress field that has a zero curl is used to force the ocean model. The result shows that the NECC geostrophic transport retains most of its seasonal variability. The same happens in another experiment in which the seasonal wind stress is applied only within a narrow band along the equator outside the NECC range. To further demonstrate the role of equatorial waves, another experiment was run in which the wind stress in the Southern Hemisphere is altered so that the model excludes hemispherically symmetrical waves (Kelvin waves and odd-numbered meridional modes of equatorial Rossby waves) and instead excites only the antisymmetrical equatorial Rossby modes. The circulation in the northern tropical ocean, including the NECC, is affected considerably even though the local wind stress there remains unchanged. All these appear to support the hypothesis presented in this paper.

Description: This study is supported by NOAA OGP’s CLIVAR-Atlantic Program (authors J. Yang and T. Joyce: NOAA Grant NA16GP1573) and NASA Physical Oceanography Program (J. Yang: JPL Grant 1217578).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 2387–2407, doi:10.1175/JPO2819.1.

Description: According to observations, the Arctic Ocean circulation beneath a shallow thermocline can be schematized by cyclonic rim currents along shelves and over ridges. In each deep basin, the circulation is also believed to be cyclonic. This circulation pattern has been used as an important benchmark for validating Arctic Ocean models. However, modeling this grand circulation pattern with some of the most sophisticated ocean–ice models has been often difficult. The most puzzling and thus perhaps the most interesting finding from the Arctic Ocean Model Intercomparison Project (AOMIP), an international consortium that runs 14 Arctic Ocean models by using the identical forcing fields, is that its model results can be grouped into two nearly exact opposite patterns. While some models produce cyclonic circulation patterns similar to observations, others do the opposite. This study examines what could be possibly responsible for such strange inconsistency. It is found here that the flux of potential vorticity (PV) from the subarctic oceans strongly controls the circulation directions. For a semienclosed basin like the Arctic, the PV integral over the whole basin yields a balance between the net lateral PV inflow and the PV dissipation along the boundary. When an isopycnal layer receives a net positive PV through inflow/outflow, the circulation becomes cyclonic so that friction can generate a flux of negative PV to satisfy the integral balance. For simplicity, a barotropic ocean model is used in this paper but its application to the 3D models will be discussed. In the first set of experiments, the model with a realistic Arctic bathymetry is forced by observed inflows and outflows. In this case, there is a net positive PV inflow to the basin, due to the fact that inflow layer is thinner than that of outflow. The model produces a circulation field that is remarkably similar to the one from observations. In the second experiment, the model bathymetry at Fram Strait is modified so that the same inflows and outflows of water masses lead to a net negative PV flux into the Arctic. The circulation is reversed and becomes nearly the opposite of the first experiment. In the third experiment, the net PV flux is made to be zero by modifying again the sill depth at Fram Strait. The circulation becomes two gyres, a cyclonic one in the Eurasian Basin and an anticyclonic one in the Canada Basin. To elucidate the control of the PV integral, a second set of model experiments is conducted by using an idealized Arctic bathymetry so that the PV dynamics can be better explained without the complication of rough topography. The results from five additional experiments that used the idealized topography will be discussed. While the model used in this study is one layer, the same PV-integral constraint can be applied to any isopycnal layer in a three-dimensional model. Variables that affect the PV fluxes to this density layer at any inflow/outflow channel, such as layer thickness and water volume flux, can affect the circulation pattern. The relevance to 3D models is discussed in this paper.

Description: This study is supported by the NSF Office of Polar Programs (OPP- 0424074) and the NASA Cryospheric Science Program (NA17RJ1223).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 457-473, doi:10.1175/JPO2849.1.

Description: Properties and seasonal evolution of North Pacific Ocean subtropical mode water (STMW) within and south of the Kuroshio Extension recirculation gyre are analyzed from profiling float data and additional hydrographic and shipboard ADCP measurements taken during 2004. The presence of an enhanced recirculation gyre and relatively low mesoscale eddy variability rendered this year favorable for the formation of STMW. Within the recirculation gyre, STMW formed from late-winter convection that reached depths greater than 450 m near the center of the gyre. The lower boundary of STMW, corresponding to σθ 25.5 kg m−3, was set by the maximum depth of the late-winter mixed layer. Properties within the deep portions of the STMW layer remained largely unchanged as the season progressed. In contrast, the upper boundary of the STMW layer eroded steadily as the seasonal thermocline deepened from late April to August. Vertical eddy diffusivity responsible for this erosion was estimated from a budget analysis of potential vorticity to be in the range of 2–5 × 10−4 m2 s−1. The latitudinal extent of the STMW formation was narrow, extending from 30°N to the Kuroshio Extension jet near 35°N. South of 30°N, STMW did not form locally but was transported from the recirculation gyre by lateral induction.

Description: This study was supported by NSF as part of a Collaborative Research Project (OCE- 0220680 to UH, OCE-0221008 to URI, and OCE- 0220161 to WHOI).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 395-411, doi:10.1175/JPO2857.1.

Description: Irminger rings are warm-core eddies formed off the west coast of Greenland. Recent studies suggest that these eddies, which are implicated in the rapid springtime restratification of the Labrador Sea, are formed by an internal instability of the West Greenland Current (WGC), triggered by bathymetric variations. This study seeks to explore the effect of the magnitude and downstream length scale of bathymetric variations on the stability of a simple model of the WGC in a series of laboratory experiments in which a buoyant coastal current was allowed to flow over bathymetry consisting of piecewise constant slopes of varying magnitude. The currents did not form eddies over gently sloping bathymetry and only formed eddies over steep bathymetry if the current width exceeded the width of the sloping bathymetry. Eddying currents were immediately stabilized if they flowed onto gently sloping topography. Bathymetric variations that persisted only a short distance downstream perturbed the flow locally but did not lead to eddy formation. Eddies formed only once the downstream length of the bathymetric variations exceeded a critical scale of about 8 Rossby radii. These results are consistent with the observed behavior of the WGC, which begins to form Irminger rings after entering a region where the continental slope abruptly steepens and becomes narrower than the WGC itself in a region spanning about 20–80 Rossby radii of downstream distance.

Description: The authors gratefully acknowledge the National Science Foundation (Grant OCE- 9810657) and the Office of Naval Research (Grant N00014-97-1-0934) for their support of the 2003 WHOI Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer School where much of the research presented in this paper was performed. CLW received additional support from the Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-98-1-0813.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 606-628, doi:10.1175/JPO2875.1.

Description: The seasonal and interannual variations in the export of Labrador Sea Water (LSW), and in the heat and freshwater transport through the central Labrador Sea, are examined for two different periods: from 1964 to 1974, using Ocean Weather Station Bravo data, and from 1996 to 2000, using data collected from profiling floats. A typical seasonal cycle involves a 300-m thickening of LSW (convection) followed by an equivalent thinning (restratification). Restratification is characterized by a drift of properties toward boundary current values that is indicative of a vigorous lateral exchange. The net result is a convergence of heat and salt, between 200 and 700 m, that balances the net surface heat loss to the atmosphere and partially offsets the surface freshwater accumulation due to surface, lateral exchange. Interannual variations in the export of LSW can be explained by taking into account changes in the central Labrador Sea–boundary current density gradient, which governs the lateral exchange. Interannual variations in how much heat is converged into the region, on the other hand, mostly reflect changes in the temperature of LSW. This only partly explains, however, the increased convergence of heat that occurs during the late 1990s. In years in which convection does not occur, restratification trends continue throughout the entire year, albeit at a reduced rate.

Description: This work was supported by NSF Grant OCE 02-40978, the John E. and Anne W. Sawyer Endowed Fund, and the Grayce B. Kerr Fund.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 967-996, doi:10.1175/JPO2876.1.

Description: Surface expressions of internal tides constitute a significant component of the total recorded tide. The internal component is strongly modulated by the time-variable density structure, and the resulting perturbation of the recorded tide gives a welcome look at twentieth-century interannual and secular variability. Time series of mean sea level hSL(t) and total recorded M2 vector aTT(t) are extracted from the Honolulu 1905–2000 and Hilo 1947–2000 (Hawaii) tide records. Internal tide parameters are derived from the intertidal continuum surrounding the M2 frequency line and from a Cartesian display of aTT(t), yielding aST = 16.6 and 22.1 cm, aIT = 1.8 and 1.0 cm for surface and internal tides at Honolulu and Hilo, respectively. The proposed model aTT(t) = aST + aIT cosθIT(t) is of a phase-modulated internal tide generated by the surface tide at some remote point and traveling to the tide gauge with velocity modulated by the underlying variable density structure. Mean sea level hSL(t) [a surrogate for the density structure and hence for θIT(t)] is coherent with aIT(t) within the decadal band 0.2–0.5 cycles per year. For both the decadal band and the century drift the recorded M2 amplitude is high when sea level is high, according to δaTT = O(0.1δhSL). The authors attribute the recorded secular increase in the Honolulu M2 amplitude from aTT = 16.1 to 16.9 cm between 1915 and 2000 to a 28° rotation of the internal tide vector in response to ocean warming.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 1822-1840, doi:10.1175/JPO2932.1.

Description: An isopycnal, two-layer, idealized model for a convective basin is proposed, consisting of a convecting, interior region and a surrounding boundary current (buoyancy and wind-driven). Parameterized eddy fluxes govern the exchange between the two. To balance the interior buoyancy loss, the boundary current becomes denser as it flows around the basin. Geostrophy imposes that this densification be accompanied by sinking in the boundary current and hence by an overturning circulation. The poleward heat transport, associated with convection in the basin, can thus be viewed as a result of both an overturning and a horizontal circulation. When adapted to the Labrador Sea, the model is able to reproduce the bulk features of the mean state, the seasonal cycle, and even the shutdown of convection from 1969 to 1972. According to the model, only 40% of the poleward heat (buoyancy) transport of the Labrador Sea is associated with the overturning circulation. An exact solution is presented for the linearized equations when changes in the boundary current are small. Numerical solutions are calculated for variations in the amount of convection and for changes in the remotely forced circulation around the basin. These results highlight how the overturning circulation is not simply related to the amount of dense water formed. A speeding up of the circulation around the basin due to wind forcing, for example, will decrease the intensity of the overturning circulation while the dense water formation remains unvaried. In general, it is shown that the fraction of poleward buoyancy (or heat) transport carried by the overturning circulation is not an intrinsic property of the basin but can vary as a result of a number of factors.

Description: This work was supported by NSF OCE 02-40978 and by the Climate Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 1241-1264, doi:10.1175/JPO2907.1.

Description: Subsurface float and surface drifter observations illustrate the structure, evolution, and eventual demise of 10 North Brazil Current (NBC) rings as they approached and collided with the Lesser Antilles in the western tropical Atlantic Ocean. Upon encountering the shoaling topography east of the Lesser Antilles, most of the rings were deflected abruptly northward and several were observed to completely engulf the island of Barbados. The near-surface and subthermocline layers of two rings were observed to cleave or separate upon encountering shoaling bathymetry between Tobago and Barbados, with the resulting portions each retaining an independent and coherent ringlike vortical circulation. Surface drifters and shallow (250 m) subsurface floats that looped within NBC rings were more likely to enter the Caribbean through the passages of the Lesser Antilles than were deeper (500 or 900 m) floats, indicating that the regional bathymetry preferentially inhibits transport of intermediate-depth ring components. No evidence was found for the wholesale passage of rings through the island chain.

Description: Funding was provided by National Science Foundation Grants OCE 97-29765 and OCE 01-36477.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 2296-2311, doi:10.1175/JPO2959.1.

Description: The subtidal salt balance and the mechanisms driving the downgradient salt flux in the Hudson River estuary are investigated using measurements from a cross-channel mooring array of current meters, temperature and conductivity sensors, and cross-channel and along-estuary shipboard surveys obtained during the spring of 2002. Steady (subtidal) vertical shear dispersion, resulting from the estuarine exchange flow, was the dominant mechanism driving the downgradient salt flux, and varied by over an order of magnitude over the spring–neap cycle, with maximum values during neap tides and minimum values during spring tides. Corresponding longitudinal dispersion rates were as big as 2500 m2 s−1 during neap tides. The salinity intrusion was not in a steady balance during the study period. During spring tides, the oceanward advective salt flux resulting from the net outflow balanced the time rate of change of salt content landward of the study site, and salt was flushed out of the estuary. During neap tides, the landward steady shear dispersion salt flux exceeded the oceanward advective salt flux, and salt entered the estuary. Factor-of-4 variations in the salt content occurred at the spring–neap time scale and at the time scale of variations in the net outflow. On average, the salt flux resulting from tidal correlations between currents and salinity (tidal oscillatory salt flux) was an order of magnitude smaller than that resulting from steady shear dispersion. During neap tides, this flux was minimal (or slightly countergradient) and was due to correlations between tidal currents and vertical excursions of the halocline. During spring tides, the tidal oscillatory salt flux was driven primarily by oscillatory shear dispersion, with an associated longitudinal dispersion rate of about 130 m2 s−1.

Description: This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant OCE00-95972 and Hudson River Foundation Grant 005/03A. Author Lerczak received partial support from the Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 1420-1429, doi:10.1175/JPO2914.1.

Description: The gravitational potential energy balance of the thermal circulation in a simple rectangular model basin is diagnosed from numerical experiments based on a mass-conserving oceanic general circulation model. The vertical mixing coefficient is assumed to be a given constant. The model ocean is heated/cooled from the upper surface or bottom, and the equation of state is linear or nonlinear. Although the circulation patterns obtained from these cases look rather similar, the energetics of the circulation may be very different. For cases of differential heating from the bottom with a nonlinear equation of state, the circulation is driven by mechanical energy generated by heating from the bottom. On the other hand, circulation for three other cases is driven by external mechanical energy, which is implicitly provided by tidal dissipation and wind stress. The major balance of gravitational energy in this model ocean is between the source of energy due to vertical mixing and the conversion from kinetic energy at low latitudes and the sink of energy due to convection adjustment and conversion to kinetic energy at high latitudes.

Description: RXH and XZJ were supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE0094807 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Van Alan Clark Chair of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 629-635, doi:10.1175/JPO2890.1.

Description: Previous field observations indicate that the directional spread of swell-frequency (nominally 0.1 Hz) surface gravity waves increases during shoreward propagation across the surf zone. This directional broadening contrasts with the narrowing observed seaward of the surf zone and predicted by Snell’s law for bathymetric refraction. Field-observed broadening was predicted by a new model for refraction of swell by lower-frequency (nominally 0.01 Hz) current and elevation fluctuations. The observations and the model suggest that refraction by the cross-shore currents of energetic shear waves contributed substantially to the observed broadening.

Description: Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, and the National Ocean Partnership Program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 1305-1316, doi:10.1175/JPO2909.1.

Description: Observations of the buoyant coastal current that flows southward from Chesapeake Bay are used to describe how the thickness, width, and propagation speed vary in response to changes in the along-shelf wind stress. Three basic regimes were observed depending on the strength of the wind. For weak wind stresses (from −0.02 to 0.02 Pa), the buoyant coastal current was relatively thin, the front slope was not steep, and the width was variable (1–20 km). For moderate downwelling (southward) wind stresses (0.02–0.07 Pa), wind-driven cross-shelf advection steepened the front, causing the plume to narrow and thicken. For stronger downwelling wind stresses (greater than 0.07 Pa), vertical mixing dominated, bulk Richardson numbers were approximately 0.25, isopycnals were nearly vertical, and the plume front widened but the plume width did not change. Plume thickness and width were normalized by the theoretical plume scales in the absence of wind forcing. Normalized plume thickness increased linearly from 1 to 2 as downwelling wind stresses increased from 0 to 0.2 Pa. Normalized plume widths were approximately 1 for downwelling wind stresses from 0.02 to 0.2 Pa. The observed along-shelf propagation speed of the plume was roughly equal to the sum of the theoretical propagation speed and the wind-driven along-shelf flow.

Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-0095059, OCE-0220773, OCE-92-21614, and OCE-96-33013.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 2185-2198, doi:10.1175/JPO2967.1.

Description: The time-dependent response of an ocean basin to the imposition of cooling (or heating) is examined in the context of a quasigeostrophic, two-layer model on the beta plane. The focus is on the structure and magnitude of the vertical motion and its response to both a switch-on forcing and a periodic forcing. The model employed is a time-dependent version of an earlier model used to discuss the intensification of sinking in the region of the western boundary current. The height of the interface of the two-layer model serves as an analog of temperature, and the vertical velocity at the interface consists of a cross-isopycnal velocity modeled in terms of a relaxation to a prescribed interface height, an adiabatic representation of eddy thickness fluxes parameterized as lateral diffusion of thickness, and the local vertical motion of the interface itself. The presence of time dependence adds additional dynamical features to the problem, in particular the emergence of low-frequency, weakly damped Rossby basin modes. If the buoyancy forcing is zonally uniform the basin responds to a switch-on of the forcing by coming into steady-state equilibrium after the passage of a single baroclinic Rossby wave. If the forcing is nonuniform in the zonal direction, a sequence of Rossby basin modes is excited and their decay is required before the basin achieves a steady state. For reasonable parameter values the boundary layers, in which both horizontal and vertical circulations are closed, are quasi-steady and respond to the instantaneous state of the interior. As in the steady problem the flow is sensitive to small nonquasigeostrophic mass fluxes across the perimeter of the basin. These fluxes generally excite basin modes as well. The basin modes will also be weakly excited if the beta-plane approximation is relaxed. The response to periodic forcing is also examined, and the sensitivity of the response to the structure of the forcing is similar to the switch-on problem.

Description: This research was supported in part by NSF Grant OCE-9901654,

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 374-387, doi:10.1175/JPO-2692.1.

Description: Observations at the mouth of the Fraser River (British Columbia, Canada) indicate an abrupt frontal transition between unstratified river outflow and a highly stratified river plume with differences in salinity greater than 25 psu across a few meters in the vertical direction and several hundred meters in the horizontal direction. The front roughly follows a natural break in the bathymetry, crossing the channel at an angle of approximately 45°, and is essentially stationary for a period of approximately 3.5 h centered on the low tide following the larger of two daily ebbs. The location of the front is coincident with observations of significantly supercritical internal Froude numbers at the front, based on velocities in the along-flow direction. This observation contradicts the one-dimensional theory, which indicates that the Froude number should be 1. However, because the front is oriented obliquely to the outflow, a coordinate system can be selected that is normal to the front and for which a critical Froude number of 1 is obtained. This indicates that a Froude angle, similar in application to a Mach angle for transonic flows, can be used to determine critical conditions when the front is oblique to the principal flow direction.

Description: This work was performed as a part of D. MacDonald’s Ph.D. thesis, and was funded by Office of Naval Research Grants N000-14-97-10134 and N000-14-97- 10566, National Science Foundation Grant OCE- 9906787, a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship, and support from the WHOI Academic Programs Office.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2011. 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 41 (2011): 1160–1181, doi:10.1175/2011JPO4547.1.

Description: Tropical instability waves are triggered by instabilities of the equatorial current systems, and their sea level signal, with peak amplitude near 5°N, is one of the most prominent features of the dynamic topography of the tropics. Cross-spectral analysis of satellite altimetry observations shows that there is sea level variability in the Pacific Ocean as far north as Hawaii (i.e., 20°N) that is coherent with the sea level variability near 5°N associated with tropical instability waves. Within the uncertainty of the analysis, this off-equatorial variability obeys the dispersion relation for nondivergent, barotropic Rossby waves over a fairly broad range of periods (26–38 days) and zonal wavelengths (9°–23° of longitude) that are associated with tropical instability waves. The dispersion relation and observed wave properties further suggest that the waves are carrying energy away from the instabilities toward the North Pacific subtropical gyre, which, together with the observed coherence of the sea level signal of the barotropic waves with that of the tropical instability waves, suggests that the barotropic Rossby waves are being radiated from the tropical instability waves. The poleward transport of kinetic energy and westward momentum by these barotropic Rossby waves may influence the circulation in the subtropics.

Description: Funding for this research came from WHOI’s TropicalResearch Initiative, the Charles D. Hollister Fund for Assistant Scientist Support, the John E. and Anne W. Sawyer Endowed Fund in Special Support of Scientific Staff, and Grant OCE-0845150 from the National Science Foundation.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2011. 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 41 (2011): 1874–1893, doi:10.1175/2011JPO4604.1.

Description: A two-dimensional cross-shelf model of the New England continental shelf and slope is used to investigate the mean cross-shelf and vertical circulation at the shelf break and their seasonal variation. The model temperature and salinity fields are nudged toward climatology. Annual and seasonal mean wind stresses are applied on the surface in separate equilibrium simulations. The along-shelf pressure gradient force associated with the along-shelf sea level tilt is tuned to match the modeled and observed depth-averaged along-shelf velocity. Steady-state model solutions show strong seasonal variation in along-shelf and cross-shelf velocity, with the strongest along-shelf jet and interior onshore flow in winter, consistent with observations. Along-shelf sea level tilt associated with the tuned along-shelf pressure gradient increases shoreward because of decreasing water depth. The along-shelf sea level tilt varies seasonally with the wind and is the strongest in winter and weakest in summer. A persistent upwelling is generated at the shelf break with a maximum strength of 2 m day−1 at 50-m depth in winter. The modeled shelfbreak upwelling differs from the traditional view in that most of the upwelled water is from the upper continental slope instead of from the shelf in the form of a detached bottom boundary layer.

Description: WGZ was supported by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholarship program. GGGandDJMwere supported byONRGrant N-00014- 06-1-0739.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2011. 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 41 (2011): 2168–2186, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-08.1.

Description: This paper studies the interaction of an Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC)–like wind-driven channel flow with a continental slope and a flat-bottomed bay-shaped shelf near the channel’s southern boundary. Interaction between the model ACC and the topography in the second layer induces local changes of the potential vorticity (PV) flux, which further causes the formation of a first-layer PV front near the base of the topography. Located between the ACC and the first-layer slope, the newly formed PV front is constantly perturbed by the ACC and in turn forces the first-layer slope with its own variability in an intermittent but persistent way. The volume transport of the slope water across the first-layer slope edge is mostly directly driven by eddies and meanders of the new front, and its magnitude is similar to the maximum Ekman transport in the channel. Near the bay’s opening, the effect of the topographic waves, excited by offshore variability, dominates the cross-isobath exchange and induces a mean clockwise shelf circulation. The waves’ propagation is only toward the west and tends to be blocked by the bay’s western boundary in the narrow-shelf region. The ensuing wave–coast interaction amplifies the wave amplitude and the cross-shelf transport. Because the interaction only occurs near the western boundary, the shelf water in the west of the bay is more readily carried offshore than that in the east and the mean shelf circulation is also intensified along the bay’s western boundary.

Description: Y. Zhang acknowledges the support of the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Physical Oceanography and NSF OCE-9901654 and OCE- 0451086. J. Pedlosky acknowledges the support of NSF OCE-9901654 and OCE-0451086.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 25 (2012): 343–349, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00059.1.

Description: The Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) is a major component of the tropical Pacific Ocean circulation. EUC velocity in most global climate models is sluggish relative to observations. Insufficient ocean resolution slows the EUC in the eastern Pacific where nonlinear terms should dominate the zonal momentum balance. A slow EUC in the east creates a bottleneck for the EUC to the west. However, this bottleneck does not impair other major components of the tropical circulation, including upwelling and poleward transport. In most models, upwelling velocity and poleward transport divergence fall within directly estimated uncertainties. Both of these transports play a critical role in a theory for how the tropical Pacific may change under increased radiative forcing, that is, the ocean dynamical thermostat mechanism. These findings suggest that, in the mean, global climate models may not underrepresent the role of equatorial ocean circulation, nor perhaps bias the balance between competing mechanisms for how the tropical Pacific might change in the future. Implications for model improvement under higher resolution are also discussed.

Description: KBK gratefully acknowledges the J. Lamar Worzel Assistant Scientist Fund. GCJ is supported by NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. RM gratefully acknowledges the generous support and hospitality of the Divecha Centre for Climate Change and CAOS at IISc, Bangalore, and partial support by NASA PO grants.

Description: 2012-07-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 25 (2012): 1096–1115, doi:10.1175/2011JCLI4228.1.

Description: Ventilation, including subduction and obduction, for the global oceans was examined using Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) outputs. The global subduction rate averaged over the period from 1959 to 2006 is estimated at 505.8 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), while the corresponding global obduction rate is estimated at 482.1 Sv. The annual subduction/obduction rates vary greatly on the interannual and decadal time scales. The global subduction rate is estimated to have increased 7.6% over the past 50 years, while the obduction rate is estimated to have increased 9.8%. Such trends may be insignificant because errors associated with the data generated by ocean data assimilation could be as large as 10%. However, a major physical mechanism that induced these trends is primarily linked to changes in the Southern Ocean. While the Southern Ocean plays a key role in global subduction and obduction rates and their variability, both the Southern Ocean and equatorial regions are critically important sites of water mass formation/erosion.

Description: This work was supported by the Key State Basic Research Program of China under Grant 2012CB417401, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 40906007, 40890152), and the Open Foundation of Physical Oceanography Laboratory, OUC, under Grant 200902.

Description: 2012-08-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 659–668, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-0125.1.

Description: Ice-tethered profiler (ITP) measurements from the Arctic Ocean’s Canada Basin indicate an ocean surface layer beneath sea ice with significant horizontal density structure on scales of hundreds of kilometers to the order 1 km submesoscale. The observed horizontal gradients in density are dynamically important in that they are associated with restratification of the surface ocean when dense water flows under light water. Such restratification is prevalent in wintertime and competes with convective mixing upon buoyancy forcing (e.g., ice growth and brine rejection) and shear-driven mixing when the ice moves relative to the ocean. Frontal structure and estimates of the balanced Richardson number point to the likelihood of dynamical restratification by isopycnal tilt and submesoscale baroclinic instability. Based on the evidence here, it is likely that submesoscale processes play an important role in setting surface-layer properties and lateral density variability in the Arctic Ocean.

Description: Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Arctic Sciences Section under Awards ARC-0519899, ARC-0856479, and ARC-0806306. Support was also provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Arctic Research Initiative.

Description: 2012-10-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 25 (2012): 2622–2651, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00301.1.

Description: This study presents an overview of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon and Pacific decadal variability (PDV) simulated in a multicentury preindustrial control integration of the NCAR Community Climate System Model version 4 (CCSM4) at nominal 1° latitude–longitude resolution. Several aspects of ENSO are improved in CCSM4 compared to its predecessor CCSM3, including the lengthened period (3–6 yr), the larger range of amplitude and frequency of events, and the longer duration of La Niña compared to El Niño. However, the overall magnitude of ENSO in CCSM4 is overestimated by ~30%. The simulated ENSO exhibits characteristics consistent with the delayed/recharge oscillator paradigm, including correspondence between the lengthened period and increased latitudinal width of the anomalous equatorial zonal wind stress. Global seasonal atmospheric teleconnections with accompanying impacts on precipitation and temperature are generally well simulated, although the wintertime deepening of the Aleutian low erroneously persists into spring. The vertical structure of the upper-ocean temperature response to ENSO in the north and south Pacific displays a realistic seasonal evolution, with notable asymmetries between warm and cold events. The model shows evidence of atmospheric circulation precursors over the North Pacific associated with the “seasonal footprinting mechanism,” similar to observations. Simulated PDV exhibits a significant spectral peak around 15 yr, with generally realistic spatial pattern and magnitude. However, PDV linkages between the tropics and extratropics are weaker than observed.

Description: M. Alexander, A. Capotondi, and J. Scott’s participation was supported by a grant from the NSF Climate and Large-scale Dynamics Program. Y.-O. Kwon gratefully acknowledges support from a WHOI Heyman fellowship and a grant from the NSF Climate and Largescale Dynamics Program. The CESM project is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Description: 2012-10-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 25 (2012): 3515–3531, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00028.1.

Description: The study examined global variability of air–sea sensible heat flux (SHF) from 1980 to 2009 and the large-scale atmospheric and ocean circulations that gave rise to this variability. The contribution of high-latitude wintertime SHF was identified, and the relative importance of the effect of the sea–air temperature difference versus the effect of wind on decadal SHF variability was analyzed using an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) approach. The study showed that global SHF anomalies are strongly modulated by SHF at high latitudes (poleward of 45°) during winter seasons. Decadal variability of global wintertime SHF can be reasonably represented by the sum of two leading EOF modes, namely, the boreal wintertime SHF in the northern oceans and the austral wintertime SHF in the southern oceans. The study also showed that global wintertime SHF is modulated by the prominent modes of the large-scale atmospheric circulation at high latitudes. The increase of global SHF in the 1990s is attributable to the strengthening of the Southern Hemisphere annular mode index, while the decrease of global SHF after 2000 is due primarily to the downward trend of the Arctic Oscillation index. This study identified the important effects of wind direction and speed on SHF variability. Changes in winds modify the sea–air temperature gradient by advecting cold and dry air from continents and by imposing changes in wind-driven oceanic processes that affect sea surface temperature (SST). The pattern of air temperature anomalies dominates over the pattern of SST anomalies and dictates the pattern of decadal SHF variability.

Description: The study is supported by the NOAA Office of Climate Observations (OCO) and the WHOI Arctic Climate Initiative. X. Song acknowledges the support from the China Scholarship Council, National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (40930844, 40976004, and 40921004) and the Ministry of Education’s 111 Project (B07036).

Description: 2012-11-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 1083–1098, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-015.1.

Description: Here, the response of a coastally trapped buoyant plume to downwelling-favorable wind forcing is explored using a simplified two-dimensional numerical model and a prognostic theory for the resulting width, depth, and density anomaly and along-shelf transport of the plume. Consistent with the numerical simulations, the analytical model shows that the wind causes mixing of the plume water and that the forced cross-shelf circulation can also generate significant deepening and surface narrowing, as well as increased along-shelf transport. The response is due to a combination of the purely advective process that leads to the steepening of the isopycnals and the entrainment of ambient water into the plume. The advective component depends on the initial plume geometry: plumes that have a large fraction of their total width in contact with the bottom (“bottom trapped”) suffer relatively small depth and width changes compared to plumes that have a large fraction of their total width detached from the bottom (“surface trapped”). Key theoretical parameters are Wγ/Wα, the ratio of the width of the plume detached from the bottom to the width of the plume in contact with it, and the ratio of the wind-generated mixed layer δe to the initial plume depth hp, which determines the amount of water initially entrained into the plume. The model results also show that the cross-shelf circulation can be strongly influenced by the wind-driven response in combination with the geostrophic shear of the plume. The continuous entrainment into the plume, as well as transient events, is also discussed.

Description: This work has been supported by FONDECYT Grant 1070501. S. Lentz received support by theNational Science Foundation GrantOCE-0751554. C. Moffat had additional support from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs through U.S. Southern Ocean GLOBEC Grants OPP 99-10092 and 06- 23223.

Description: 2013-01-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 25 (2012): 3549–3565, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00320.1.

Description: The recently released NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) is used to examine the response to ENSO in the northeast tropical Pacific Ocean (NETP) during 1979–2009. The normally cool Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) associated with wind jets through the gaps in the Central American mountains at Tehuantepec, Papagayo, and Panama are substantially warmer (colder) than the surrounding ocean during El Niño (La Niña) events. Ocean dynamics generate the ENSO-related SST anomalies in the gap wind regions as the surface fluxes damp the SSTs anomalies, while the Ekman heat transport is generally in quadrature with the anomalies. The ENSO-driven warming is associated with large-scale deepening of the thermocline; with the cold thermocline water at greater depths during El Niño in the NETP, it is less likely to be vertically mixed to the surface, particularly in the gap wind regions where the thermocline is normally very close to the surface. The thermocline deepening is enhanced to the south of the Costa Rica Dome in the Papagayo region, which contributes to the local ENSO-driven SST anomalies. The NETP thermocline changes are due to coastal Kelvin waves that initiate westward-propagating Rossby waves, and possibly ocean eddies, rather than by local Ekman pumping. These findings were confirmed with regional ocean model experiments: only integrations that included interannually varying ocean boundary conditions were able to simulate the thermocline deepening and localized warming in the NETP during El Niño events; the simulation with variable surface fluxes, but boundary conditions that repeated the seasonal cycle, did not.

Description: This research was supported by grants from the NOAA office of Global Programs and the NSF Climate and Global Dynamics Division.

Description: 2012-11-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 29 (2012): 1363–1376, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-12-00060.1.

Description: The design of a surface mooring for deployment in the Gulf Stream in the Mid-Atlantic Bight is described. The authors' goals were to observe the surface meteorology; upper-ocean variability; and air–sea exchanges of heat, freshwater, and momentum in and near the Gulf Stream during two successive 1-yr deployments. Of particular interest was quantifying these air–sea fluxes during wintertime events that carry cold, dry air from the land over the Gulf Stream. Historical current data and information about the surface waves were used to guide the design of the surface mooring. The surface buoy provided the platform for both bulk meteorological sensors and a direct covariance flux system. Redundancy in the meteorological sensors proved to be a largely successful strategy to obtain complete time series. Oceanographic instrumentation was limited in size by considerations of drag; and two current meters, three temperature–salinity recorders, and 15 temperature recorders were deployed. Deployment from a single-screw vessel in the Gulf Stream required a controlled-drift stern first over the anchor sites. The first deployment lasted the planned full year. The second deployment ended after 3 months when the mooring was cut by unknown means at a depth of about 3000 m. The mooring was at times in the core of the Gulf Stream, and a peak surface current of over 2.7 m s−1 was observed. The 15-month records of surface meteorology and air–sea fluxes captured the seasonal variability as well as several cold-air outbreaks; the peak observed heat loss was in excess of 1400 W m−2.

Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation Grant OCE04-24536 as part of the CLIVAR Mode Water Dynamics Experiment (CLIMODE). The Vetlesen Foundation is also acknowledged for the early support of SB.

Description: 2013-03-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 1981–2000, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-028.1.

Description: Packets of nonlinear internal waves (NLIWs) in a small area of the Mid-Atlantic Bight were 10 times more energetic during a local neap tide than during the preceding spring tide. This counterintuitive result cannot be explained if the waves are generated near the shelf break by the local barotropic tide since changes in shelfbreak stratification explain only a small fraction of the variability in barotropic to baroclinic conversion. Instead, this study suggests that the occurrence of strong NLIWs was caused by the shoaling of distantly generated internal tides with amplitudes that are uncorrelated with the local spring-neap cycle. An extensive set of moored observations show that NLIWs are correlated with the internal tide but uncorrelated with barotropic tide. Using harmonic analysis of a 40-day record, this study associates steady-phase motions at the shelf break with waves generated by the local barotropic tide and variable-phase motions with the shoaling of distantly generated internal tides. The dual sources of internal tide energy (local or remote) mean that shelf internal tides and NLIWs will be predictable with a local model only if the locally generated internal tides are significantly stronger than shoaling internal tides. Since the depth-integrated internal tide energy in the open ocean can greatly exceed that on the shelf, it is likely that shoaling internal tides control the energetics on shelves that are directly exposed to the open ocean.

Description: This research was supported by ONR Grants N00014-05-1-0271, N00014-08-1-0991, N00014-04- 1-0146, and N00014-11-1-0194.

Description: 2013-05-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 2143–2152, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-027.1.

Description: Direct measurements of turbulence levels in the Drake Passage region of the Southern Ocean show a marked enhancement over the Phoenix Ridge. At this site, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is constricted in its flow between the southern tip of South America and the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Observed turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rates are enhanced in the regions corresponding to the ACC frontal zones where strong flow reaches the bottom. In these areas, turbulent dissipation levels reach 10−8 W kg−1 at abyssal and middepths. The mixing enhancement in the frontal regions is sufficient to elevate the diapycnal turbulent diffusivity acting in the deep water above the axis of the ridge to 1 × 10−4 m2 s−1. This level is an order of magnitude larger than the mixing levels observed upstream in the ACC above smoother bathymetry. Outside of the frontal regions, dissipation rates are O(10−10) W kg−1, comparable to the background levels of turbulence found throughout most mid- and low-latitude regions of the global ocean.

Description: This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and by the Natural Environment Research Council of the United Kingdom.

Description: 2013-06-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. 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 43 (2013): 698–705, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-0119.1.

Description: Owing to the larger thermal expansion coefficient at higher temperatures, more buoyancy is put into the ocean by heating than is removed by cooling at low temperatures. The authors show that, even with globally balanced thermal and haline surface forcing at the ocean surface, there is a negative density flux and hence a positive buoyancy flux. As shown by McDougall and Garrett, this must be compensated by interior densification on mixing due to the nonlinearity of the equation of state (cabbeling). Three issues that arise from this are addressed: the estimation of the annual input of density forcing, the effects of the seasonal cycle, and the total cabbeling potential of the ocean upon complete mixing. The annual expansion through surface density forcing in a steady-state ocean driven by balanced evaporation–precipitation–runoff (E–P–R) and net radiative budget at the surface Qnet is estimated as 74 000 m3 s−1 (0.07 Sv; 1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), which would be equivalent to a sea level rise of 6.3 mm yr−1. This is equivalent to approximately 3 times the estimated rate of sea level rise or 450% of the average Mississippi River discharge. When seasonal variations are included, this density forcing increases by 35% relative to the time-mean case to 101 000 m3 s−1 (0.1 Sv). Likely bounds are established on these numbers by using different Qnet and E–P–R datasets and the estimates are found to be robust to a factor of ~2. These values compare well with the cabbeling-induced contraction inferred from independent thermal dissipation rate estimates. The potential sea level decrease upon complete vertical mixing of the ocean is estimated as 230 mm. When horizontal mixing is included, the sea level drop is estimated as 300 mm.

Description: The authors would like to acknowledge support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Grant NNX12AF59G and the National Science Foundation, Grant OCE-0647949.

Description: 2013-10-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2012. 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 42 (2012): 2206–2228, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-0191.1.

Description: This study investigates the anisotropic properties of the eddy-induced material transport in the near-surface North Atlantic from two independent datasets, one simulated from the sea surface height altimetry and one derived from real-ocean surface drifters, and systematically examines the interactions between the mean- and eddy-induced material transport in the region. The Lagrangian particle dispersion, which is widely used to characterize the eddy-induced tracer fluxes, is quantified by constructing the “spreading ellipses.” The analysis consistently demonstrates that this dispersion is spatially inhomogeneous and strongly anisotropic. The spreading is larger and more anisotropic in the subtropical than in the subpolar gyre, and the largest ellipses occur in the Gulf Stream vicinity. Even at times longer than half a year, the spreading exhibits significant nondiffusive behavior in some parts of the domain. The eddies in this study are defined as deviations from the long-term time-mean. The contributions from the climatological annual cycle, interannual, and subannual (shorter than one year) variability are investigated, and the latter is shown to have the strongest effect on the anisotropy of particle spreading. The influence of the mean advection on the eddy-induced particle spreading is investigated using the “eddy-following-full-trajectories” technique and is found to be significant. The role of the Ekman advection is, however, secondary. The pronounced anisotropy of particle dispersion is expected to have important implications for distributing oceanic tracers, and for parameterizing eddy-induced tracer transfer in non-eddy-resolving models.

Description: IR was supported by Grant NSF-OCE-0725796. IK would like to acknowledge support by the National Science foundation Grant OCE-0842834.

Description: 2013-06-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. 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 43 (2013): 905–919, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-0150.1.

Description: Interactions between vortices and a shelfbreak current are investigated, with particular attention to the exchange of waters between the continental shelf and slope. The nonlinear, three-dimensional interaction between an anticyclonic vortex and the shelfbreak current is studied in the laboratory while varying the ratio ε of the maximum azimuthal velocity in the vortex to the maximum alongshelf velocity in the shelfbreak current. Strong interactions between the shelfbreak current and the vortex are observed when ε 〉 1; weak interactions are found when ε 〈 1. When the anticyclonic vortex comes in contact with the shelfbreak front during a strong interaction, a streamer of shelf water is drawn offshore and wraps anticyclonically around the vortex. Measurements of the offshore transport and identification of the particle trajectories in the shelfbreak current drawn offshore from the vortex allow quantification of the fraction of the shelfbreak current that is deflected onto the slope; this fraction increases for increasing values of ε. Experimental results in the laboratory are strikingly similar to results obtained from observations in the Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB); after proper scaling, measurements of offshore transport and offshore displacement of shelf water for vortices in the MAB that span a range of values of ε agree well with laboratory predictions.

Description: Laboratory work was supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE- 0081756. Glider observations in March–April 2006 were supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-0220769. Glider observations in July– October 2007 were supported by a grant from Raytheon. RET was supported by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with funding provided by the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region. The REMUS observations were funded by the Office of Naval Research. GGG was supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-1129125 for analysis and writing.

Description: 2013-11-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. 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 30 (2013): 1576–1582, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-12-00204.1.

Description: Onset's HOBO U22 Water Temp Pros are small, reliable, relatively inexpensive, self-contained temperature loggers that are widely used in studies of oceans, lakes, and streams. An in-house temperature bath calibration of 158 Temp Pros indicated root-mean-square (RMS) errors ranging from 0.01° to 0.14°C, with one value of 0.23°C, consistent with the factory specifications. Application of a quadratic calibration correction substantially reduced the RMS error to less than 0.009°C in all cases. The primary correction was a bias error typically between −0.1° and 0.15°C. Comparison of water temperature measurements from Temp Pros and more accurate temperature loggers during two oceanographic studies indicates that calibrated Temp Pros have an RMS error of ~0.02°C throughout the water column at night and beneath the surface layer influenced by penetrating solar radiation during the day. Larger RMS errors (up to 0.08°C) are observed near the surface during the day due to solar heating of the black Temp Pro housing. Errors due to solar heating are significantly reduced by wrapping the housing with white electrical tape.

Description: This work is based on research supported by Awards USA 00002 and KSA 00011 made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and by the Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE- 0548961.

Description: 2014-01-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. 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 26 (2013): 4447–4475, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00589.1.

Description: Changes in atmospheric CO2 variability during the twenty-first century may provide insight about ecosystem responses to climate change and have implications for the design of carbon monitoring programs. This paper describes changes in the three-dimensional structure of atmospheric CO2 for several representative concentration pathways (RCPs 4.5 and 8.5) using the Community Earth System Model–Biogeochemistry (CESM1-BGC). CO2 simulated for the historical period was first compared to surface, aircraft, and column observations. In a second step, the evolution of spatial and temporal gradients during the twenty-first century was examined. The mean annual cycle in atmospheric CO2 was underestimated for the historical period throughout the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting that the growing season net flux in the Community Land Model (the land component of CESM) was too weak. Consistent with weak summer drawdown in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes, simulated CO2 showed correspondingly weak north–south and vertical gradients during the summer. In the simulations of the twenty-first century, CESM predicted increases in the mean annual cycle of atmospheric CO2 and larger horizontal gradients. Not only did the mean north–south gradient increase due to fossil fuel emissions, but east–west contrasts in CO2 also strengthened because of changing patterns in fossil fuel emissions and terrestrial carbon exchange. In the RCP8.5 simulation, where CO2 increased to 1150 ppm by 2100, the CESM predicted increases in interannual variability in the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes of up to 60% relative to present variability for time series filtered with a 2–10-yr bandpass. Such an increase in variability may impact detection of changing surface fluxes from atmospheric observations.

Description: The CESM project is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science (BER) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Computing resources were provided by the Climate Simulation Laboratory at NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL), sponsored by the National Science Foundation and other agencies. G.K.A. acknowledges support of a NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellowship. J.T.R., N.M.M., S.C.D., K.L., and J.K.M. acknowledge support of Collaborative Research: Improved Regional and Decadal Predictions of the Carbon Cycle (NSF AGS-1048827, AGS-1021776,AGS-1048890). TheHIPPO Programwas supported byNSF GrantsATM-0628575,ATM-0628519, and ATM-0628388 to Harvard University, University of California (San Diego), and by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, University of Colorado/ CIRES, by the NCAR and by the NOAAEarth System Research Laboratory. Sunyoung Park, Greg Santoni, Eric Kort, and Jasna Pittman collected data during HIPPO. The ACME project was supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02- 05CH11231 as part of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM), the ARM Aerial Facility, and the Terrestrial EcosystemScience Program. TCCON measurements at Eureka were made by the Canadian Network for Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (CANDAC) with additional support from the Canadian Space Agency. The Lauder TCCON program was funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology contracts CO1X0204, CO1X0703, and CO1X0406. Measurements at Darwin andWollongong were supported by Australian Research Council Grants DP0879468 and DP110103118 and were undertaken by David Griffith, Nicholas Deutscher, and Ronald Macatangay. We thank Pauli Heikkinen, Petteri Ahonen, and Esko Kyr€o of the Finnish Meteorological Institute for contributing the Sodankyl€a TCCON data. Measurements at Park Falls, Lamont, and Pasadena were supported byNASAGrant NNX11AG01G and the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory Program. Data at these sites were obtained by Geoff Toon, Jean- Francois Blavier, Coleen Roehl, and Debra Wunch.

Description: 2014-01-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2014. 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 27 (2014): 2405–2416, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00359.1.

Description: Several recent studies utilizing global climate models predict that the Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) will strengthen over the twenty-first century. Here, historical changes in the tropical Pacific are investigated using the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) reanalysis toward understanding the dynamics and mechanisms that may dictate such a change. Although SODA does not assimilate velocity observations, the seasonal-to-interannual variability of the EUC estimated by SODA corresponds well with moored observations over a ~20-yr common period. Long-term trends in SODA indicate that the EUC core velocity has increased by 16% century−1 and as much as 47% century−1 at fixed locations since the mid-1800s. Diagnosis of the zonal momentum budget in the equatorial Pacific reveals two distinct seasonal mechanisms that explain the EUC strengthening. The first is characterized by strengthening of the western Pacific trade winds and hence oceanic zonal pressure gradient during boreal spring. The second entails weakening of eastern Pacific trade winds during boreal summer, which weakens the surface current and reduces EUC deceleration through vertical friction. EUC strengthening has important ecological implications as upwelling affects the thermal and biogeochemical environment. Furthermore, given the potential large-scale influence of EUC strength and depth on the heat budget in the eastern Pacific, the seasonal strengthening of the EUC may help reconcile paradoxical observations of Walker circulation slowdown and zonal SST gradient strengthening. Such a process would represent a new dynamical “thermostat” on CO2-forced warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, emphasizing the importance of ocean dynamics and seasonality in understanding climate change projections.

Description: EJDis supported by NSFGrantsOCE-1031971 and OCE-1233282. KBK is supported by NSF Grant OCE-1233282.

Description: 2014-09-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2014. 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 21 (2014): 2015–2025, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-13-00262.1.

Description: The NOAA Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) moored array has, for three decades, been a valuable resource for monitoring and forecasting El Niño–Southern Oscillation and understanding physical oceanographic as well as coupled processes in the tropical Pacific influencing global climate. Acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) measurements by TAO moorings provide benchmarks for evaluating numerical simulations of subsurface circulation including the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC). Meanwhile, the Sea Education Association (SEA) has been collecting data during repeat cruises to the central equatorial Pacific Ocean (160°–126°W) throughout the past decade that provide useful cross validation and quantitative insight into the potential for stationary observing platforms such as TAO to incur sampling biases related to the strength of the EUC. This paper describes some essential sampling characteristics of the SEA dataset, compares SEA and TAO velocity measurements in the vicinity of the EUC, shares new insight into EUC characteristics and behavior only observable in repeat cross-equatorial sections, and estimates the sampling bias incurred by equatorial TAO moorings in their estimates of the velocity and transport of the EUC. The SEA high-resolution ADCP dataset compares well with concurrent TAO measurements (RMSE = 0.05 m s−1; R2 = 0.98), suggests that the EUC core meanders sinusoidally about the equator between ±0.4° latitude, and reveals a mean sampling bias of equatorial measurements (e.g., TAO) of the EUC’s zonal velocity of −0.14 ± 0.03 m s−1 as well as a ~10% underestimation of EUC volume transport. A bias-corrected monthly record and climatology of EUC strength at 140°W for 1990–2010 is presented.

Description: The authors thank the NSF Physical Oceanography program (OCE-1233282) and the WHOI Academic Programs Office for funding.

Description: 2015-03-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. 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 43 (2013): 2641–2660, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-0239.1.

Description: To quantify dynamical aspects of internal-tide generation at the Mid-Atlantic Bight shelf break, this study employs an idealized ocean model initialized by climatological summertime stratification and forced by monochromatic barotropic tidal currents at the offshore boundary. The Froude number of the scenario is subunity, and the bathymetric slope offshore of the shelf break is supercritical. A barotropic-to-baroclinic energy conversion rate of 335 W m−1 is found, with 14% of the energy locally dissipated through turbulence and bottom friction and 18% radiated onto the shelf. Consistent with prior studies, nonlinear effects result in additional super- and subharmonic internal waves at the shelf break. The subharmonic waves are subinertial, evanescent, and mostly trapped within a narrow beam of internal waves at the forcing frequency. They likely result from nonresonant triad interaction associated with strong nonlinearity. Strong vertical shear associated with the subharmonic waves tends to enhance local energy dissipation and turbulent momentum exchange (TME). A simulation with reduced tidal forcing shows an expected diminished level of harmonic energy. A quasi-linear simulation verifies the role of momentum advection in controlling the relative phases of internal tides and the efficiency of barotropic-to-baroclinic energy conversion. The local TME is tightly coupled with the internal-wave dynamics: for the chosen configuration, neglecting TME causes the internal-wave energy to be overestimated by 12%, and increasing it to high levels damps the waves on the continental shelf. This work implies a necessity to carefully consider nonlinearity and turbulent processes in the calculation of internal tidal waves generated at the shelf break.

Description: This research was supported by Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-11-1-0701.

Description: 2014-06-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. 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 26 (2013): 9839–9859, doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00647.1.

Description: Spatial and temporal covariability between the atmospheric transient eddy heat fluxes (i.e., υ′T′ and υ′q′) in the Northern Hemisphere winter (January–March) and the paths of the Gulf Stream (GS), Kuroshio Extension (KE), and Oyashio Extension (OE) are examined based on an atmospheric reanalyses and ocean observations for 1979–2009. For the climatological winter mean, the northward heat fluxes by the synoptic (2–8 days) transient eddies exhibit canonical storm tracks with their maxima collocated with the GS and KE/OE. The intraseasonal (8 days–3 months) counterpart, while having overall similar amplitude, shows a spatial pattern with more localized maxima near the major orography and blocking regions. Lateral heat flux divergence by transient eddies as the sum of the two frequency bands exhibits very close coupling with the exact locations of the ocean fronts. Linear regression is used to examine the lead–lag relationship between interannual changes in the northward heat fluxes by the transient eddies and the meridional changes in the paths of the GS, KE, and OE, respectively. One to three years prior to the northward shifts of each ocean front, the atmospheric storm tracks shift northward and intensify, which is consistent with wind-driven changes of the ocean. Following the northward shifts of the ocean fronts, the synoptic storm tracks weaken in all three cases. The zonally integrated northward heat transport by the synoptic transient eddies increases by ~5% of its maximum mean value prior to the northward shift of each ocean front and decreases to a similar amplitude afterward.

Description: Support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Physical Oceanography Program (NNX09AF35G to TJ and Y-OK) and the Department of Energy (DOE) Climate and Environmental Sciences Division (DE-SC0007052 to Y-OK) is gratefully acknowledged.

Description: 2014-06-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 27 (2010): 580-593, doi:10.1175/2009JTECHO696.1.

Description: The feasibility of using high-frequency acoustic scattering techniques to map the extent and evolution of the diffusive regime of double-diffusive convection in the ocean is explored. A scattering model developed to describe acoustic scattering from double-diffusive interfaces in the laboratory, which accounted for much of the measured scattering in the frequency range from 200 to 600 kHz, is used in conjunction with published in situ observations of diffusive-convection interfaces to make predictions of acoustic scattering from oceanic double-diffusive interfaces. Detectable levels of acoustic scattering are predicted for a range of different locations in the world’s oceans. To corroborate these results, thin acoustic layers detected near the western Antarctic Peninsula using a multifrequency acoustic backscattering system are shown to be consistent with scattering from diffusive-convection interfaces.

Description: TR is grateful to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant and University Faculty Award Programs, which support her work at Dalhousie University.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 27 (2010): 889-907, doi:10.1175/2009JTECHO682.1.

Description: Recently, the velocity observations of acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) have been successfully used to estimate turbulent Reynolds stresses in estuaries and tidal channels. However, the presence of surface gravity waves can significantly bias stress estimates, limiting application of the technique in the coastal ocean. This work describes a new approach to estimate Reynolds stresses from ADCP velocities obtained in the presence of waves. The method fits an established semiempirical model of boundary layer turbulence to the measured turbulent cospectra at frequencies below those of surface gravity waves to estimate the stress. Applied to ADCP observations made in weakly stratified waters and variable significant wave heights, estimated near-bottom and near-surface stresses using this method compared well with independent estimates of the boundary stresses in contrast to previous methods. Additionally, the vertical structure of tidal stress estimated using the new approach matched that inferred from a linear momentum balance at stress levels below the estimated stress uncertainties. Because the method makes an estimate of the horizontal turbulent length scales present as part of the model fit, these results can also enable a direct correction for the mean bias errors resulting from instrument tilt, if these scales are long relative to the beam separation.

Description: AK acknowledges support from the WHOI Coastal Ocean Institute, and SL acknowledges support from NSF Ocean Science Grant OCE-0548961.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 40 (2010): 1004-1017, doi:10.1175/2009JPO4300.1.

Description: Sea surface temperature variations along the entire U.S. East Coast from 1875 to 2007 are characterized using a collection of historical observations from lighthouses and lightships combined with recent buoy and shore-based measurements. Long-term coastal temperature trends are warming in the Gulf of Maine [1.0° ± 0.3°C (100 yr)−1] and Middle Atlantic Bight [0.7° ± 0.3°C (100 yr)−1], whereas trends are weakly cooling or not significant in the South Atlantic Bight [−0.1° ± 0.3°C (100 yr)−1] and off Florida [−0.3° ± 0.2°C (100 yr)−1]. Over the last century, temperatures along the northeastern U.S. coast have warmed at a rate 1.8–2.5 times the regional atmospheric temperature trend but are comparable to warming rates for the Arctic and Labrador, the source of coastal ocean waters north of Cape Hatteras (36°N). South of Cape Hatteras, coastal ocean temperature trends match the regional atmospheric temperature trend. The observations and a simple model show that along-shelf transport, associated with the mean coastal current system running from Labrador to Cape Hatteras, is the mechanism controlling long-term temperature changes for this region and not the local air–sea exchange of heat.

Description: This work was supported by NSF Grant OCE-0220773.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 26 (2009): 1867-1890, doi:10.1175/2009JTECHO667.1.

Description: The accuracies of the meteorological sensors (air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, near-surface temperature, longwave and shortwave radiation, and wind speed and direction) that compose the Improved Meteorological (IMET) system used on buoys at long-term ocean time series sites known as ocean reference stations (ORS) are analyzed to determine their absolute error characteristics. The predicted errors are compared to in situ measurement discrepancies and other observations (direct flux shipboard sensors) to confirm the predictions. The meteorological errors are then propagated through bulk flux formulas and the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE) algorithm to give predicted errors for the heat flux components, the freshwater flux, and the momentum flux. Absolute errors are presented for three frequency bands [instantaneous (1-min sampling), diurnal, and annual]. The absolute uncertainty in the annually averaged net heat flux is found to be 8 W m−2 for conditions similar to the current ORS deployments in the subtropics.

Description: Support for the buoy deployments and the analysis from the NOAA Climate Observation Program is greatly appreciated (Grants NA17RJ1223 and NA17RJ1224).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 (2010): 85-102, doi:10.1175/2009JPO4168.1.

Description: The existence of a cool and salty sea surface skin under evaporation was first proposed by Saunders in 1967, but few efforts have since been made to perceive the salt component of the skin layer. With two salinity missions scheduled to launch in the coming years, this study attempted to revisit the Saunders concept and to utilize presently available air–sea forcing datasets to analyze, understand, and interpret the effect of the salty skin and its implication for remote sensing of ocean salinity. Similar to surface cooling, the skin salinification would occur primarily at low and midlatitudes in regions that are characterized by low winds or high evaporation. On average, the skin is saltier than the interior water by 0.05–0.15 psu and cooler by 0.2°–0.5°C. The cooler and saltier skin at the top is always statically unstable, and the tendency to overturn is controlled by cooling. Once the skin layer overturns, the time to reestablish the full increase of skin salinity was reported to be on the order of 15 min, which is approximately 90 times slower than that for skin temperature. Because the radiation received from a footprint is averaged over an area to give a single pixel value, the slow recovery by the salt diffusion process might cause a slight reduction in area-averaged skin salinity and thus obscure the salty skin effect on radiometer retrievals. In the presence of many geophysical error sources in remote sensing of ocean salinity, the salt enrichment at the surface skin does not appear to be a concern.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 40 (2010): 636-655, doi:10.1175/2009JPO4267.1.

Description: The effects of a sloping bottom and stratification on a turbulent bottom boundary layer are investigated for cases where the interior flow oscillates monochromatically with frequency ω. At higher frequencies, or small slope Burger numbers s = αN/f (where α is the bottom slope, N is the interior buoyancy frequency, and f is the Coriolis parameter), the bottom boundary layer is well mixed and the bottom stress is nearly what it would be over a flat bottom. For lower frequencies, or larger slope Burger number, the bottom boundary layer consists of a thick, weakly stratified outer layer and a thinner, more strongly stratified inner layer. Approximate expressions are derived for the different boundary layer thicknesses as functions of s and σ = ω/f. Further, buoyancy arrest causes the amplitude of the fluctuating bottom stress to decrease with decreasing σ (the s dependence, although important, is more complicated). For typical oceanic parameters, arrest is unimportant for fluctuation periods shorter than a few days. Substantial positive (toward the right when looking toward deeper water in the Northern Hemisphere) time-mean flows develop within the well-mixed boundary layer, and negative mean flows exist in the weakly stratified outer boundary layer for lower frequencies and larger s. If the interior flow is realistically broad band in frequency, the numerical model predicts stress reduction over all frequencies because of the nonlinearity associated with a quadratic bottom stress. It appears that the present one-dimensional model is reliable only for time scales less than the advective time scale that governs interior stratification.

Description: This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Physical Oceanography Program through Grant OCE 0647050.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 40 (2010): 1441–1457, doi:10.1175/2010JPO4293.1.

Description: Based on the classical Ekman layer theory, a simple analytical solution of the steady flow induced by a stationary hurricane in a homogenous ocean is discussed. The model consists of flow converging in an inward spiral in the deeper layer and diverging in the upper layer. The simple analytical model indicates that both the upwelling flux and the horizontal transport increase linearly with increasing radius of maximum winds. Furthermore, they both have a parabolic relationship with the maximum wind speed. The Coriolis parameter also affects the upwelling flux: the response to a hurricane is stronger at low latitudes than that at middle latitudes. Numerical solutions based on a regional version of an ocean general circulation model are similar to the primary results obtained through the analytical solution. Thus, the simplifications made in formulating the analytical solution are reasonable. Although the analytical solution in this paper is sought for a rather idealized ocean, it can help to make results from the more complicated numerical model understandable. These conceptual models provide a theoretical limit structure of the oceanic response to a moving hurricane over a stratified ocean.

Description: ZML was supported by CAS (kzcx2-yw-226, SQ200813), NSFC under Grants 40906009 and 40776008, and Dr. Xiaodong Shang through ‘‘100 Talents Program’’ of CAS.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 22 (2009): 3177–3192, doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2690.1.

Description: Coherent, large-scale shifts in the paths of the Gulf Stream (GS) and the Kuroshio Extension (KE) occur on interannual to decadal time scales. Attention has usually been drawn to causes for these shifts in the overlying atmosphere, with some built-in delay of up to a few years resulting from propagation of wind-forced variability within the ocean. However, these shifts in the latitudes of separated western boundary currents can cause substantial changes in SST, which may influence the synoptic atmospheric variability with little or no time delay. Various measures of wintertime atmospheric variability in the synoptic band (2–8 days) are examined using a relatively new dataset for air–sea exchange [Objectively Analyzed Air–Sea Fluxes (OAFlux)] and subsurface temperature indices of the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio path that are insulated from direct air–sea exchange, and therefore are preferable to SST. Significant changes are found in the atmospheric variability following changes in the paths of these currents, sometimes in a local fashion such as meridional shifts in measures of local storm tracks, and sometimes in nonlocal, broad regions coincident with and downstream of the oceanic forcing. Differences between the North Pacific (KE) and North Atlantic (GS) may be partly related to the more zonal orientation of the KE and the stronger SST signals of the GS, but could also be due to differences in mean storm-track characteristics over the North Pacific and North Atlantic.

Description: Support for this work from various grants [T. Joyce: NSF OCE-0424865; Y.-O. Kwon: The Grayce B. Kerr Fund and The Jessie B. Cox Endowed Fund; L.Yu: NOAA NA17RJ1223 and NASA Vector Wind Science Team through JPL Subcontract 1283726] is gratefully acknowledged.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 39 (2009): 1551-1573, doi:10.1175/2008JPO4152.1.

Description: A conceptually simple model is presented for predicting the amplitude and periodicity of eddies generated by a steady poleward outflow in a 1½-layer β-plane formulation. The prediction model is rooted in linear quasigeostrophic dynamics but is capable of predicting the amplitude of the β plume generated by outflows in the nonlinear range. Oscillations in the plume amplitude are seen to represent a near-zero group velocity response to an adjustment process that can be traced back to linear dynamics. When the plume-amplitude oscillations become large enough so that the coherent β plume is replaced by a robust eddy field, the eddy amplitude is still constrained by the plume-amplitude prediction model. The eddy periodicity remains close to that of the predictable, near-zero group-velocity linear oscillations. Striking similarities between the patterns of variability in the model and observations south of Indonesia’s Lombok Strait suggest that the processes investigated in this study may play an important role in the generation of the observed eddy field of the Indo-Australian Basin.

Description: This work was completed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution while TS Durland was supported by the Ocean and Climate Change Institute. MA Spall was supported by NSF Grant OCE-0423975 and J Pedlosky by NSF Grant OCE-0451086. TS Durland acknowledges additional report preparation support from NASA Grant NNG05GN98G.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 39 (2009): 2942-2956, doi:10.1175/2009JPO4041.1.

Description: Recent work by S. Lentz et al. documents offshore transport in the inner shelf due to a wave-driven return flow associated with the Hasselmann wave stress (the Stokes–Coriolis force). This analysis is extended using observations from the central Oregon coast to identify the wave-driven return flow present and quantify the potential bias of wind-driven across-shelf exchange by unresolved wave-driven circulation. Using acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) measurements at six stations, each in water depths of 13–15 m, observed depth-averaged, across-shelf velocities were generally correlated with theoretical estimates of the proposed return flow. During times of minimal wind forcing, across-shelf velocity profiles were vertically sheared, with stronger velocities near the top of the measured portion of the water column, and increased in magnitude with increasing significant wave height, consistent with circulation due to the Hasselmann wave stress. Yet velocity magnitudes and vertical shears were stronger than that predicted by linear wave theory, and more similar to the stratified “summer” velocity profiles described by S. Lentz et al. Additionally, substantial temporal and spatial variability of the wave-driven return flow was found, potentially due to changing wind and wave conditions as well as local bathymetric variability. Despite the wave-driven circulation found, subtracting estimates of the return flow from the observed across-shelf velocity had no significant effect on estimates of the across-shelf exchange due to along-shelf wind forcing at these water depths along the Oregon coast during summer.

Description: This work was performed with the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO), funded primarily by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and David and Lucile Packard Foundation. SL acknowledges support from NSF Ocean Science Grant #OCE-0548961. AK acknowledges support from the WHOI Coastal Ocean Institute Fellowship.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 39 (2009): 1231-1243, doi:10.1175/2008JPO4087.1.

Description: As a driving parameter is slowly altered, thermohaline ocean circulation models show either a smooth evolution of a mode of flow or an abrupt transition of temperature and salinity fields from one mode to another. An abrupt transition might occur at one value or over a range of the driving parameter. The latter has hysteresis because the mode in this range depends on the history of the driving parameter. Although assorted ocean circulation models exhibit abrupt transitions, such transitions have not been directly observed in the ocean. Therefore, laboratory experiments have been conducted to seek and observe actual (physical) abrupt thermohaline transitions. An experiment closely duplicating Stommel’s box model possessed abrupt transitions in temperature and salinity with distinct hysteresis. Two subsequent experiments with more latitude for internal circulation in the containers possessed abrupt transitions over a much smaller range of hysteresis. Therefore, a new experiment with even more latitude for internal circulation was designed and conducted. A large tank of constantly renewed freshwater at room temperature had a smaller cavity in the bottom heated from below with saltwater steadily pumped in. The cavity had either a salt mode, consisting of the cavity filled with heated salty water with an interface at the cavity top, or a temperature mode, in which the heat and saltwater were removed from the cavity by convection. There was no measurable hysteresis between the two modes. Possible reasons for such small hysteresis are discussed.

Description: Support is gratefully acknowledged from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Climate Change Institute, the National Science Foundation, Physical Oceanography Section under Grant OCE-0081179, and the Paul M. Fye Chair of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 39 (2009): 387-403, doi:10.1175/2008JPO3934.1.

Description: Marginal sea overflows and the overlying upper ocean are coupled in the vertical by two distinct mechanisms—by an interfacial mass flux from the upper ocean to the overflow layer that accompanies entrainment and by a divergent eddy flux associated with baroclinic instability. Because both mechanisms tend to be localized in space, the resulting upper ocean circulation can be characterized as a β plume for which the relevant background potential vorticity is set by the slope of the topography, that is, a topographic β plume. The entrainment-driven topographic β plume consists of a single gyre that is aligned along isobaths. The circulation is cyclonic within the upper ocean (water columns are stretched). The transport within one branch of the topographic β plume may exceed the entrainment flux by a factor of 2 or more. Overflows are likely to be baroclinically unstable, especially near the strait. This creates eddy variability in both the upper ocean and overflow layers and a flux of momentum and energy in the vertical. In the time mean, the eddies accompanying baroclinic instability set up a double-gyre circulation in the upper ocean, an eddy-driven topographic β plume. In regions where baroclinic instability is growing, the momentum flux from the overflow into the upper ocean acts as a drag on the overflow and causes the overflow to descend the slope at a steeper angle than what would arise from bottom friction alone. Numerical model experiments suggest that the Faroe Bank Channel overflow should be the most prominent example of an eddy-driven topographic β plume and that the resulting upper-layer transport should be comparable to that of the overflow. The overflow-layer eddies that accompany baroclinic instability are analogous to those observed in moored array data. In contrast, the upper layer of the Mediterranean overflow is likely to be dominated more by an entrainment-driven topographic β plume. The difference arises because entrainment occurs at a much shallower location for the Mediterranean case and the background potential vorticity gradient of the upper ocean is much larger.

Description: SK’s support during the time of his Ph.D. research in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program was provided by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE04-24741. JP and JY have also received support from the Climate Process Team on Gravity Current Entrainment, NSF Grant OCE-0611530. JY has also been supported by NSF Grant OCE-0351055.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 39 (2009): 1035-1049, doi:10.1175/2008JPO3920.1.

Description: Seasonal variability of near-inertial horizontal kinetic energy is examined using observations from a series of McLane Moored Profiler moorings located at 39°N, 69°W in the western North Atlantic Ocean in combination with a one-dimensional, depth-integrated kinetic energy model. The time-mean kinetic energy and shear vertical wavenumber spectra of the high-frequency motions at the mooring site are in reasonable agreement with the Garrett–Munk internal wave description. Time series of depth-dependent and depth-integrated near-inertial kinetic energy are calculated from available mooring data after filtering to isolate near-inertial-frequency motions. These data document a pronounced seasonal cycle featuring a wintertime maximum in the depth-integrated near-inertial kinetic energy deriving chiefly from the variability in the upper 500 m of the water column. The seasonal signal in the near-inertial kinetic energy is most prominent for motions with vertical wavelengths greater than 100 m but observable wintertime enhancement is seen down to wavelengths of the order of 10 m. Rotary vertical wavenumber spectra exhibit a dominance of clockwise-with-depth energy, indicative of downward energy propagation and implying a surface energy source. A simple depth-integrated near-inertial kinetic energy model consisting of a wind forcing term and a dissipation term captures the order of magnitude of the observed near-inertial kinetic energy as well as its seasonal cycle.

Description: Funding to initiate the McLane Moored Profiler observations at Line W were provided by grants from the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and the Comer Charitable Fund to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean and Climate Change Institute. Ongoing moored observations at Line W are supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant OCE-0241354).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 65 (2008): 3316–3326, doi:10.1175/2008JAS2579.1.

Description: The connection between transport barriers and potential vorticity (PV) barriers in PV-conserving flows is investigated with a focus on zonal jets in planetary atmospheres. A perturbed PV staircase model is used to illustrate important concepts. This flow consists of a sequence of narrow eastward and broad westward zonal jets with a staircase PV structure; the PV steps are at the latitudes of the cores of the eastward jets. Numerically simulated solutions to the quasigeostrophic PV conservation equation in a perturbed PV staircase flow are presented. These simulations reveal that both eastward and westward zonal jets serve as robust meridional transport barriers. The surprise is that westward jets, across which the background PV gradient vanishes, serve as robust transport barriers. A theoretical explanation of the underlying barrier mechanism is provided. It is argued that transport barriers near the cores of westward zonal jets, across which the background PV gradient is small, are found in Jupiter’s midlatitude weather layer and in the earth’s summer hemisphere subtropical stratosphere.

Description: Support for this work was provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Grants CMG0417425 and OCE0648284.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 418-434, doi:10.1175/2007JPO3372.1.

Description: Stratification and turbulent mixing exhibit a flood–ebb tidal asymmetry in estuaries and continental shelf regions affected by horizontal density gradients. The authors use a large-eddy simulation (LES) model to investigate the penetration of a tidally driven bottom boundary layer into stratified water in the presence of a horizontal density gradient. Turbulence in the bottom boundary layer is driven by bottom stress during flood tides, with low-gradient (Ri) and flux (Rf) Richardson numbers, but by localized shear during ebb tides, with Ri = ¼ and Rf = 0.2 in the upper half of the boundary layer. If the water column is unstratified initially, the LES model reproduces periodic stratification associated with tidal straining. The model results show that the energetics criterion based on the competition between tidal straining and tidal stirring provides a good prediction for the onset of periodic stratification, but the tidally averaged horizontal Richardson number Rix has a threshold value of about 0.2, which is lower than the 3 suggested in a recent study. Although the tidal straining leads to negative buoyancy flux on flood tides, the authors find that for typical values of the horizontal density gradient and tidal currents in estuaries and shelf regions, buoyancy production is much smaller than shear production in generating turbulent kinetic energy.

Description: This work is supported by Grants OCE-0451699 and OCE-0451740 from the National Science Foundation.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 1054–1072, doi:10.1175/2007JPO3739.1.

Description: This study makes direct measurements of turbulent fluxes in the mixed layer in order to close heat and momentum budgets across the air–sea interface and to assess the ability of rigid-boundary turbulence models to predict mean vertical gradients beneath the ocean’s wavy surface. Observations were made at 20 Hz at nominal depths of 2.2 and 1.7 m in 16 m of water. A new method is developed to estimate the fluxes and the length scales of dominant flux-carrying eddies from cospectra at frequencies below the wave band. The results are compared to independent estimates of those quantities, with good agreement between the two sets of estimates. The observed temperature gradients were smaller than predicted by standard rigid-boundary closure models, consistent with the suggestion that wave breaking and Langmuir circulation increase turbulent diffusivity in the upper ocean. Similarly, the Monin–Obukhov stability function ϕh was smaller in the authors’ measurements than the stability functions used in rigid-boundary applications of the Monin–Obukhov similarity theory. The dominant horizontal length scales of flux-carrying turbulent eddies were found to be consistent with observations in the bottom boundary layer of the atmosphere and from laboratory experiments in three ways: 1) in statically unstable conditions, the eddy sizes scaled linearly with distance to the boundary; 2) in statically stable conditions, length scales decreased with increasing downward buoyancy flux; and 3) downwind length scales were larger than crosswind length scales.

Description: We are grateful to the Office of Naval Research for funding this work as a part of CBLAST-Low.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2008. 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 38 (2008): 2358-2378, doi:10.1175/2008JPO3990.1.

Description: Six-yr-long time series of winds, waves, and water velocity from a cabled coastal observatory in 12 m of water reveal the separate dependence of the cross-shelf velocity profile on cross-shelf and along-shelf winds, waves, and tides. During small waves, cross-shelf wind is the dominant mechanism driving the cross-shelf circulation after tides and tidal residual motions are removed. The along-shelf wind does not drive a substantial cross-shelf circulation. During offshore winds, the cross-shelf circulation is offshore in the upper water column and onshore in the lower water column, with roughly equal and opposite volume transports in the surface and bottom layers. During onshore winds, the circulation is nearly the reverse. The observed profiles and cross-shelf transport in the surface layer during winter agree with a simple two-dimensional unstratified model of cross-shelf wind stress forcing. The cross-shelf velocity profile is more vertically sheared and the surface layer transport is stronger in summer than in winter for a given offshore wind stress. During large waves, the cross-shelf circulation is no longer roughly symmetric in the wind direction. For onshore winds, the cross-shelf velocity profile is nearly vertically uniform, because the wind- and wave-driven shears cancel; for offshore winds, the profile is strongly vertically sheared because the wind- and wave-driven shears have the same sign. The Lagrangian velocity profile in winter is similar to the part of the Eulerian velocity profile due to cross-shelf wind stress alone, because the contribution of Stokes drift to the Lagrangian velocity approximately cancels the contribution of waves to the Eulerian velocity.

Description: This research was funded by the Ocean Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-0241292 and OCE-0548961 and by National Aeronautics and Space Administration Headquarters under Grant NNG04GL03G and the Earth System Science Fellowship Grant NNG04GQ14H. MVCO is partly funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Jewett/EDUC/Harrison Foundation.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 88 (2007): 341-356, doi:10.1175/bams-88-3-341.

Description: The Office of Naval Research's Coupled Boundary Layers and Air–Sea Transfer (CBLAST) program is being conducted to investigate the processes that couple the marine boundary layers and govern the exchange of heat, mass, and momentum across the air–sea interface. CBLAST-LOW was designed to investigate these processes at the low-wind extreme where the processes are often driven or strongly modulated by buoyant forcing. The focus was on conditions ranging from negligible wind stress, where buoyant forcing dominates, up to wind speeds where wave breaking and Langmuir circulations play a significant role in the exchange processes. The field program provided observations from a suite of platforms deployed in the coastal ocean south of Martha's Vineyard. Highlights from the measurement campaigns include direct measurement of the momentum and heat fluxes on both sides of the air–sea interface using a specially constructed Air–Sea Interaction Tower (ASIT), and quantification of regional oceanic variability over scales of O (1–104 mm) using a mesoscale mooring array, aircraft-borne remote sensors, drifters, and ship surveys. To our knowledge, the former represents the first successful attempt to directly and simultaneously measure the heat and momentum exchange on both sides of the air–sea interface. The latter provided a 3D picture of the oceanic boundary layer during the month-long main experiment. These observations have been combined with numerical models and direct numerical and large-eddy simulations to investigate the processes that couple the atmosphere and ocean under these conditions. For example, the oceanic measurements have been used in the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) to investigate the 3D evolution of regional ocean thermal stratification. The ultimate goal of these investigations is to incorporate improved parameterizations of these processes in coupled models such as the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) to improve marine forecasts of wind, waves, and currents.

Description: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 20 (2007): 3190-3209, doi:10.1175/JCLI4163.1.

Description: This study investigated the accuracy and physical representation of air–sea surface heat flux estimates for the Indian Ocean on annual, seasonal, and interannual time scales. Six heat flux products were analyzed, including the newly developed latent and sensible heat fluxes from the Objectively Analyzed Air–Sea Heat Fluxes (OAFlux) project and net shortwave and longwave radiation results from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP), the heat flux analysis from the Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC), the National Centers for Environmental Prediction reanalysis 1 (NCEP1) and reanalysis-2 (NCEP2) datasets, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts operational (ECMWF-OP) and 40-yr Re-Analysis (ERA-40) products. This paper presents the analysis of the six products in depicting the mean, the seasonal cycle, and the interannual variability of the net heat flux into the ocean. Two time series of in situ flux measurements, one taken from a 1-yr Arabian Sea Experiment field program and the other from a 1-month Joint Air–Sea Monsoon Interaction Experiment (JASMINE) field program in the Bay of Bengal were used to evaluate the statistical properties of the flux products over the measurement periods. The consistency between the six products on seasonal and interannual time scales was investigated using a standard deviation analysis and a physically based correlation analysis. The study has three findings. First of all, large differences exist in the mean value of the six heat flux products. Part of the differences may be attributable to the bias in the numerical weather prediction (NWP) models that underestimates the net heat flux into the Indian Ocean. Along the JASMINE ship tracks, the four NWP modeled mean fluxes all have a sign opposite to the observations, with NCEP1 being underestimated by 53 W m−2 (the least biased) and ECMWF-OP by 108 W m−2 (the most biased). At the Arabian Sea buoy site, the NWP mean fluxes also have an underestimation bias, with the smallest bias of 26 W m−2 (ERA-40) and the largest bias of 69 W m−2 (NCEP1). On the other hand, the OAFlux+ISCCP has the best comparison at both measurement sites. Second, the bias effect changes with the time scale. Despite the fact that the mean is biased significantly, there is no major bias in the seasonal cycle of all the products except for ECMWF-OP. The latter does not have a fixed mean due to the frequent updates of the model platform. Finally, among the four products (OAFlux+ISCCP, ERA-40, NCEP1, and NCEP2) that can be used for studying interannual variability, OAFlux+ISCCP and ERA-40 Qnet have good consistency as judged from both statistical and physical measures. NCEP1 shows broad agreement with the two products, with varying details. By comparison, NCEP2 is the least representative of the Qnet variabilities over the basin scale.

Description: This work is supported by the NOAA Office of Climate Observation and the Office of Climate Change and Data Detection under Grant NA17RJ1223.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 20 (2007): 4255-4266, doi:10.1175/JCLI4254.1

Description: The Indian monsoon–El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) relationship, according to which a drier than normal monsoon season precedes peak El Niño conditions, weakened significantly during the last two decades of the twentieth century. In this work an ensemble of integrations of an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) coupled to an ocean model in the Indian Basin and forced with observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) elsewhere is used to investigate the causes of such a weakening. The observed interdecadal variability of the ENSO–monsoon relationship during the period 1950–99 is realistically simulated by the model and a dominant portion of the variability is associated with changes in the tropical Atlantic SSTs in boreal summer. In correspondence to ENSO, the tropical Atlantic SSTs display negative anomalies south of the equator in the last quarter of the twentieth century and weakly positive anomalies in the previous period. Those anomalies in turn produce heating anomalies, which excite a Rossby wave response in the Indian Ocean in both the model and the reanalysis data, impacting the time-mean monsoon circulation. The proposed mechanism of remote response of the Indian rainfall to tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures is further tested forcing the AGCM coupled to the ocean model in the Indian Basin with climatological SSTs in the Atlantic Ocean and observed anomalies elsewhere. In this second ensemble the ENSO–monsoon relationship is characterized by a stable and strong anticorrelation through the whole second half of the twentieth century.

Description: The experiments in this paper were performed as a contribution to the ENSEMBLES project funded by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme, Contract GOCE-CT-2003-505539

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 24 (2007): 1924-1935, doi:10.1175/JTECH2078.1.

Description: A field evaluation of two new dissolved-oxygen sensing technologies, the Aanderaa Instruments AS optode model 3830 and the Sea-Bird Electronics, Inc., model SBE43, was carried out at about 32-m water depth in western Massachusetts Bay. The optode is an optical sensor that measures fluorescence quenching by oxygen molecules, while the SBE43 is a Clark polarographic membrane sensor. Optodes were continuously deployed on bottom tripod frames by exchanging sensors every 4 months over a 19-month period. A Sea-Bird SBE43 was added during one 4-month deployment. These moored observations compared well with oxygen measurements from profiles collected during monthly shipboard surveys conducted by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. The mean correlation coefficient between the moored measurements and shipboard survey data was 〉0.9, the mean difference was 0.06 mL L−1, and the standard deviation of the difference was 0.15 mL L−1. The correlation coefficient between the optode and the SBE43 was 〉0.9 and the mean difference was 0.07 mL L−1. Optode measurements degraded when fouling was severe enough to block oxygen molecules from entering the sensing foil over a significant portion of the sensing window. Drift observed in two optodes beginning at about 225 and 390 days of deployment is attributed to degradation of the sensing foil. Flushing is necessary to equilibrate the Sea-Bird sensor. Power consumption by the SBE43 and required pump was 19.2 mWh per sample, and the optode consumed 0.9 mWh per sample, both within expected values based on manufacturers’ specifications.

Description: This work was funded by the MWRA and USGS.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Earth Interactions 14 (2010): 1–24, doi:10.1175/2010EI327.1.

Description: The Brazilian Amazon is one of the most rapidly developing agricultural frontiers in the world. The authors assess changes in cropland area and the intensification of cropping in the Brazilian agricultural frontier state of Mato Grosso using remote sensing and develop a greenhouse gas emissions budget. The most common type of intensification in this region is a shift from single- to double-cropping patterns and associated changes in management, including increased fertilization. Using the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor, the authors created a green-leaf phenology for 2001–06 that was temporally smoothed with a wavelet filter. The wavelet-smoothed green-leaf phenology was analyzed to detect cropland areas and their cropping patterns. The authors document cropland extensification and double-cropping intensification validated with field data with 85% accuracy for detecting croplands and 64% and 89% accuracy for detecting single- and double-cropping patterns, respectively. The results show that croplands more than doubled from 2001 to 2006 to cover about 100 000 km2 and that new double-cropping intensification occurred on over 20% of croplands. Variations are seen in the annual rates of extensification and double-cropping intensification. Greenhouse gas emissions are estimated for the period 2001–06 due to conversion of natural vegetation and pastures to row-crop agriculture in Mato Grosso averaged 179 Tg CO2-e yr−1, over half the typical fossil fuel emissions for the country in recent years.

Description: This work was supported by the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (G. L. Galford) and Large-Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (Grant NNG06GE20A) and the Environmental Change Initiative at Brown University.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 554–571, doi:10.1175/JPO2997.1.

Description: This paper describes the oceanic variability at Bermuda between 1989 and 1999, recorded in two overlapping hydrographic time series. Station S and Bermuda Atlantic Time Series Study (BATS), which are 60 km apart, both show that a multidecadal trend of deep warming has reversed, likely as a result of the increased production of Labrador Sea Water since the early 1980s. In addition to recording similar changes in watermass properties, the two time series show similar mean vertical structure and variance as a function of pressure for temperature, salinity, and density above 1500 dbar. The seasonal cycles of these water properties at the two sites are statistically indistinguishable. The time series differ in the individual eddy events they record and in their variability below 1500 dbar. The two time series are used to investigate the propagation of eddy features. Coherence and phase calculated from the low-mode variability of density show westward propagation at 3 cm s−1 of wavelengths around 300–500 km. Satellite altimeter data are used to provide a broader spatial view of the eddy (or wave) field near Bermuda.

Description: We acknowledge support from NSF Grant OCE-0219644, the Australian Greenhouse Office, and CSIRO.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 409–427, doi:10.1175/JPO2988.1.

Description: Current-meter data from a two-year mooring within a fracture zone on the western flank of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the South Atlantic Ocean are reported. The mooring, deployed in conjunction with the Brazil Basin Tracer Release Experiment, was placed in the general area where enhanced diapycnal mixing had previously been inferred. The current-meter data characterize the velocity, temperature, shear, and temperature gradient variability as a function of frequency. Energetic velocities and shears were observed at the mooring at a variety of frequencies. In addition to semidiurnal flows, a significant amount of shear variance derived from near-inertial motions, as has been seen in a recent numerical modeling study of tidal-frequency internal wave radiation and wave–wave interaction. At times, a fortnightly modulation of the total superinertial shear variance was indicated in the data, but this signal did not dominate the records. Wave ray tracing indicates that the deeper current meters may have been placed in a shadow zone for locally generated internal tides. At shallower levels, it is suggested that dispersion, wave–wave interaction, and wave breaking effectively obscured the sources of the finescale energy. Average diapycnal diffusivity estimates inferred from a Richardson-number-based parameterization and from observations of temperature inversions at 4648 m were of the same order of magnitude as those derived from turbulent dissipation estimates and from the rate of diapycnal tracer dispersion. The mooring data thus add additional support to the idea that energetic finescale motions above rough bathymetry support enhanced turbulent diapycnal mixing in these regions.

Description: The research presented in this manuscript was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation through Grants OCE-9415589 and OCE-0217075 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 1163-1176, doi:10.1175/jpo3060.1.

Description: The circulation in the equatorial Pacific Ocean is studied in a series of numerical experiments based on an isopycnal coordinate model. The model is subject to monthly mean climatology of wind stress and surface thermohaline forcing. In response to decadal variability in the diapycnal mixing coefficient, sea surface temperature and other properties of the circulation system oscillate periodically. The strongest sea surface temperature anomaly appears in the geographic location of Niño-3 region with the amplitude on the order of 0.5°C, if the model is subject to a 30-yr sinusoidal oscillation in diapycnal mixing coefficient that varies between 0.03 × 10−4 and 0.27 × 10−4 m2 s−1. Changes in diapycnal mixing coefficient of this amplitude are within the bulk range consistent with the external mechanical energy input in the global ocean, especially when considering the great changes of tropical cyclones during the past decades. Thus, time-varying diapycnal mixing associated with changes in wind energy input into the ocean may play a nonnegligible role in decadal climate variability in the equatorial circulation and climate.

Description: CJH and WW were supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China through Grant 40476010 and National Basic Research Priorities Programmer of China through Grant 2005CB422302. RXH was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through CICOR Cooperative Agreement NA17RJ1223 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This study is also supported through the Chinese 111 Project under Contract B07036.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 1496-1511, doi:10.1175/jpo3071.1.

Description: Measurements collected in the York River estuary, Virginia, demonstrate the important impact that tidal and lateral asymmetries in turbulent mixing have on the tidally averaged residual circulation. A reduction in turbulent mixing during the ebb phase of the tide caused by tidal straining of the axial density gradient results in increased vertical velocity shear throughout the water column during the ebb tide. In the absence of significant lateral differences in turbulent mixing, the enhanced ebb-directed transport caused by tidal straining is balanced by a reduction in the net seaward-directed barotropic pressure gradient, resulting in laterally uniform two-layer residual flow. However, the channel–shoal morphology of many drowned river valley estuaries often leads to lateral gradients in turbulent mixing. Tidal straining may then lead to tidal asymmetries in turbulent mixing near the deeper channel while the neighboring shoals remain relatively well mixed. As a result, the largest lateral asymmetries in turbulent mixing occur at the end of the ebb tide when the channel is significantly more stratified than the shoals. The reduced friction at the end of ebb delays the onset of the flood tide, increasing the duration of ebb in the channel. Conversely, over the shoal regions where stratification is more inhibited by tidal mixing, there is greater friction and the transition from ebb to flood occurs more rapidly. The resulting residual circulation is seaward over the channel and landward over the shoal. The shoal–channel segregation of this barotropically induced estuarine residual flow is opposite to that typically associated with baroclinic estuarine circulation over channel–shoal bathymetry.

Description: Support for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences Grant OCE- 9984941.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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. 37 (2007): 2363-2386, doi:10.1175/jpo3118.1.

Description: Intrinsic low-frequency variability is studied in the idealized, quasigeostrophic, midlatitude, wind-driven ocean gyres operating at large Reynolds number. A robust decadal variability mode driven by the transient mesoscale eddies is found and analyzed. The variability is a turbulent phenomenon, which is driven by the competition between the eddy rectification process and the potential vorticity anomalies induced by changes of the intergyre transport

Description: Funding for Pavel Berloff was provided by NSF Grants OCE-0091836 and OCE- 0344094, by the U.K. Royal Society Fellowship, and by the Newton Trust Award, A. M. Hogg was supported by an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship (DP0449851) during this work, and William K. Dewar was supported by NSF Grants OCE-0424227 and OCE-0550139.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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 37 (2007): 2207-2227, doi:10.1175/jpo3178.1.

Description: The overturning and horizontal circulations of the Labrador Sea are deduced from a composite vertical section across the basin. The data come from the late-spring/early-summer occupations of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) AR7W line, during the years 1990–97. This time period was chosen because it corresponded to intense wintertime convection—the deepest and densest in the historical record—suggesting that the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) would be maximally impacted. The composite geostrophic velocity section was referenced using a mean lateral velocity profile from float data and then subsequently adjusted to balance mass. The analysis was done in depth space to determine the net sinking that results from convection and in density space to determine the diapycnal mass flux (i.e., the transformation of light water to Labrador Sea Water). The mean overturning cell is calculated to be 1 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), as compared with a horizontal gyre of 18 Sv. The total water mass transformation is 2 Sv. These values are consistent with recent modeling results. The diagnosed heat flux of 37.6 TW is found to result predominantly from the horizontal circulation, both in depth space and density space. These results suggest that the North Atlantic MOC is not largely impacted by deep convection in the Labrador Sea.

Description: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation through Grants OCE-0450658 (RP) and OCE-024978 (MS).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2007. 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. 37 (2007): 2251-2266, doi:10.1175/jpo3116.1.

Description: This paper examines the role of potential vorticity (PV) balance in source- and sink-driven flows between two basins. As shown in previous studies, PV advection into a basin, say a positive PV advection, requires a negative frictional torque to maintain a steady PV balance. This sense of torque may be provided by a cyclonic boundary current within the basin. The PV advection through a channel is due almost entirely to advection of planetary PV, f/H, where f is the Coriolis parameter and H is the column thickness. Therefore a localized change of depth, and thus H in the channel, directly affects the PV transport and will result in a basinwide change of the circulation pattern. For example, if the channel depth is made shallower while holding the transport fixed, the PV advection is then increased and the result may be a strong recirculation within the basin, as much as two orders of magnitude greater than the transport through the channel. When the basins are connected by two channels at different latitudes or with different sill depths, the throughflow is found to be divided between the two channels in a way that satisfies the integral constraint for flow around an island. The partition of the flow between two channels appears to be such as to minimize the net frictional torque. In still another set of experiments, the large-scale pressure difference (layer thickness) between the basins is specified and held fixed, while the throughflow is allowed to vary in response to changes in the frictional torque. The interbasin transport is strongly influenced by the length of the boundary or the magnitude of the viscosity in the sense that a greater PV frictional torque allows a greater PV transport and vice versa. This result is counterintuitive, if it is assumed that the throughflow is determined by viscous drag within the channel but is a straightforward consequence of the basin-scale PV balance. Thus, the important frictional effect in these experiments is on the basin-scale flow and not on the channel scale.

Description: This study is supported by NSF Grants OCE-0611530 and OCE-0351055. Price was supported in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research through Grant 13010900.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 363-373, doi:10.1175/JPO-2691.1.

Description: The interaction of equatorial Rossby waves with a western boundary perforated with one or more narrow gaps is investigated using a shallow-water numerical model and supporting theory. It is found that very little of the incident energy flux is reflected into eastward-propagating equatorial Kelvin waves provided that at least one gap is located within approximately a deformation radius of the equator. Because of the circulation theorem around an island, the existence of a second gap off the equator reduces the reflection of short Rossby waves and enhances the transmission of the incident energy into the western basin. The westward energy transmitted past the easternmost island is further reduced upon encountering islands to the west, even if these islands are located entirely within the “shadow” of the easternmost island. A localized patch of wind forcing was also used to generate low-frequency Rossby waves for cases with island configurations representative of the western equatorial Pacific. For both idealized islands and a coastline based on the 200-m isobath, the amount of incident energy reflected into Kelvin waves depends on both the duration of the wind event and the meridional decay scale of the anomalous winds. For wind events of 2-yr duration with a meridional decay scale of 700 km, the reflected energy is 37% of the incident flux, and the energy transmitted into the Indian Ocean is approximately 10% of the incident flux, very close to that predicted by previous theories. For shorter wind events or winds confined more closely to the equator the reflected energy is significantly less.

Description: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research under Grant N00014-03-1- 0338 (MAS) and by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-0240978 (MAS) and OCE-9901654 (JP).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. 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 36 (2006): 2340-2349, doi:10.1175/JPO2969.1.

Description: The overflow of dense water from the Nordic Seas through the Faroe Bank Channel (FBC) has attributes suggesting hydraulic control—primarily an asymmetry across the sill reminiscent of flow over a dam. However, this aspect has never been confirmed by any quantitative measure, nor is the position of the control section known. This paper presents a comparison of several different techniques for assessing the hydraulic criticality of oceanic overflows applied to data from a set of velocity and hydrographic sections across the FBC. These include 1) the cross-stream variation in the local Froude number, including a modified form that accounts for stratification and vertical shear, 2) rotating hydraulic solutions using a constant potential vorticity layer in a channel of parabolic cross section, and 3) direct computation of shallow water wave speeds from the observed overflow structure. Though differences exist, the three methods give similar answers, suggesting that the FBC is indeed controlled, with a critical section located 20–90 km downstream of the sill crest. Evidence of an upstream control with respect to a potential vorticity wave is also presented. The implications of these results for hydraulic predictions of overflow transport and variability are discussed.

Description: The Faroe Bank Channel experiment was supported by NSF Grant OCE-9906736. JBG gratefully acknowledges the support of the NOAA/ UCAR Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Program and NSF Grant OCE-9985840. Author Price was supported in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research through Grant N00014-04-1-0109.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society 2005. 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 22 (2005): 1797–1808, doi:10.1175/JTECH1809.1.

Description: In oceanography, there has been a growing emphasis on coastal regions, partially because of their inherent complexity, as well as the increasing acknowledgment of anthropogenic impacts. To improve understanding and characterization of coastal dynamics, there has been significant effort devoted to the development of autonomous systems that sample the ocean on relevant scales. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are especially well suited for studies of the coastal ocean because they are able to provide near-synoptic spatial observations. These sampling platforms are beginning to transition from the engineering groups that developed and continue to improve them to the science user. With this transition comes novel applications of these vehicles to address new questions in coastal oceanography. Here, the relatively mature Remote Environmental Monitoring Units (REMUS) AUV system is described and assessed. Analysis of data, based on 37 missions and nearly 800 km of in-water operation, shows that the vehicle’s navigational error estimates were consistently less than 10 m, and error estimates of mission duration, distance, velocity, and power usage, once the vehicle was properly ballasted, were below 10%. An example of the transition to science is demonstrated in an experiment conducted in 2002 in Monterey Bay, California, where the vehicle was used to quantify critical horizontal length scales of variability. Length scales on the order of tens to hundreds of meters were found for the region within 25 km of the coastline, which has significant implications for designing proper sampling approaches and parameterizing model domains. Results also demonstrate the overall utility of the REMUS vehicle for use by coastal oceanographers.

Description: This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research (N00014-00-1- 0570 and N00014-03-1-0341 to M. Moline).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2011. 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 41 (2011): 166-185, doi:10.1175/2010JPO4470.1.

Description: Field observations of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), dissipation rate ε, and turbulent length scale demonstrate the impact of both density stratification and nonlocal turbulent production on turbulent momentum flux. The data were collected in a highly stratified salt wedge estuary using the Mobile Array for Sensing Turbulence (MAST). Estimates of the dominant length scale of turbulent motions obtained from the vertical velocity spectra provide field confirmation of the theoretical limitation imposed by either the distance to the boundary or the Ozmidov scale, whichever is smaller. Under boundary-limited conditions, anisotropy generally increases with increasing shear and decreased distance to the boundary. Under Ozmidov-limited conditions, anisotropy increases rapidly when the gradient Richardson number exceeds 0.25. Both boundary-limited and Ozmidov-limited conditions demonstrate significant deviations from a local production–dissipation balance that are largely consistent with simple scaling relationships for the vertical divergence in TKE flux. Both the impact of stratification and deviation from equilibrium turbulence observed in the data are largely consistent with commonly used turbulence closure models that employ “nonequilibrium” stability functions. The data compare most favorably with the nonequilibrium version of the L. H. Kantha and C. A. Clayson stability functions. Not only is this approach more consistent with the observed critical gradient Richardson number of 0.25, but it also accounts for the large deviations from equilibrium turbulence in a manner consistent with the observations.

Description: The funding for this research was obtained from ONR Grant N00014-06-1-0292 and NSF Grants and OCE-08-25226 and OCE-08-24871.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1437-1454, doi:10.1175/JPO2763.1.

Description: Distributions of temperature (T) and salinity (S) and their relationship in the oceans are the result of a balance between T–S variability generated at the surface by air–sea fluxes and its removal by molecular dissipation. In this paper the role of different motions in setting the cascade of T–S variance to dissipation scales is quantified using data from the North Atlantic Tracer Release Experiment (NATRE). The NATRE observational programs include fine- and microscale measurements and provide a snapshot of T–S variability across a wide range of scales from basin to molecular. It is found that microscale turbulence controls the rate of thermal dissipation in the thermocline. At this level the T–S relation is established through a balance between large-scale advection by the gyre circulation and small-scale turbulence. Further down, at the level of intermediate and Mediterranean waters, mesoscale eddies are the rate-controlling process. The transition between the two regimes is related to the presence of a strong salinity gradient along density surfaces associated with the outflow of Mediterranean waters. Mesoscale eddies stir this gradient and produce a rich filamentation and salinity-compensated temperature inversions: isopycnal stirring and diapycnal mixing are both required to explain the T–S relation at depth.

Description: Office of Naval Research under Award N00014-03-1-0354.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1782–1800, doi:10.1175/JPO2788.1.

Description: Two methods for assessing the hydraulic criticality of an observed or modeled overflow are discussed. The methods are valid for single-layer deep flows with arbitrary potential vorticity and cross section. The first method is based on a purely steady view in which the flow at a given section is divided up into a group of “streamtubes.” A hydraulic analysis requires an extension of Gill’s functional formulation to systems with many degrees of freedom. The general form of the critical condition and associated compatibility condition for such a system are derived and applied to the streamtube model. As an aside, it is shown by example that Gill’s original critical condition can fail to capture all possible critical states, but that this problem is fixed when the multivariable approach is used. It is also shown how Gill’s method can be applied to certain dispersive or dissipative systems. The second method of assessing criticality involves direct calculation of linear, long-wave speeds using a time-dependent version of the streamtube model. This approach turns out to be better suited to the analysis of geophysical datasets. The significance of the local Froude number F is discussed. It is argued that F must take on the value unity at some point across a critical section.

Description: This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant OCE-0132903 and the Office of Naval Research under Grant N00014-01-1- 0167.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2010. 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 40 (2010): 2768–2777, doi:10.1175/2010JPO4461.1.

Description: Although sustained observations yield a description of the mean equatorial current system from the western Pacific to the eastern terminus of the Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO) array, a comprehensive observational dataset suitable for describing the structure and pathways of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) east of 95°W does not exist and therefore climate models are unconstrained in a region that plays a critical role in ocean–atmosphere coupling. Furthermore, ocean models suggest that the interaction between the EUC and the Galápagos Islands (92°W) has a striking effect on the basic state and coupled variability of the tropical Pacific. To this end, the authors interpret historical measurements beginning with those made in conjunction with the discovery of the Pacific EUC in the 1950s, analyze velocity measurements from an equatorial TAO mooring at 85°W, and analyze a new dataset from archived shipboard ADCP measurements. Together, the observations yield a possible composite description of the EUC structure and pathways in the eastern equatorial Pacific that may be useful for model validation and guiding future observation.

Description: Karnauskas acknowledges the WHOI Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2005. 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 35 (2005): 1861–1875, doi:10.1175/JPO2791.1.

Description: A method based on isopycnal trajectory analysis is proposed to quantify the pathways from the subtropics to the Tropics. For a continuous stratified ocean a virtual streamfunction is defined, which can be used to characterize these pathways. This method is applied to the climatological dataset produced from a data-assimilated model. Analysis indicates that in each layer contours of the virtual streamfunction are a good approximation for streamlines, even if there is a cross-isopycnal mass flux. The zonal-integrated meridional transport per unit layer thickness through each pathway varies in proportion to 1/sinθ, where θ is latitude. The vertical-integrated total transport through pathways behaves similarly. Transport through pathways has a prominent decadal variability. Results suggest that in decadal time scales the interior pathway transport (IPT) anomaly may be mainly caused by the wind stress anomaly at low latitude. The western boundary pathway transport (WBPT) anomaly often has a sign opposite to the IPT anomaly, reflecting compensation between the IPT and the WBPT. However, more often than not the wind stress anomaly within tropical latitudes can also be used to explain the WBPT anomaly.

Description: QW was supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China through Grants 40176003 and 40136010 and National Key Program for Developing Basic Research of China through Grants 2005CB422301. RXH was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through CICOR Cooperative Agreement NA17RJ1223 and National Science Foundation through Grant OCE- 0094807 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.