Discrepancies in Simulated Ocean Net Surface Heat Fluxes over the North Atlantic

Yang, Yazhu; Liao, Xiaoqing; Cao, Ning; Liu, Jiang; Ou, Niansen; Allan, Richard P.; Jin, Liang; Chen, Ni; Zheng, Rong

doi:10.1007/s00376-022-1360-7

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 108 publications

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“…2c). This is in contrast to previous studies, which have attributed the widespread underestimation of subtropical MHT in numerical models (e.g., Liu et al, 2022) to the overly diffusive thermocline simulated in z-coordinates (Msadek et al, 2013;Roberts et al, 2020), which results in a warmer than observed AMOC lower limb.…”

Section: Lagrangian Particle Trackingcontrasting

confidence: 99%

Lagrangian Decomposition of the Atlantic Ocean Heat Transport at 26.5oN

Tooth,

Foukal,

Johns

et al. 2024

Preprint

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The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) plays a critical role in the global climate system through the redistribution of heat, freshwater and carbon. At 26.5N, the meridional heat transport has traditionally been partitioned geometrically into vertical and horizontal circulation contributions; however, attributing these components to the AMOC and Subtropical Gyre (STG) flow structures remains widely debated. Using water parcel trajectories evaluated within an eddy-rich ocean hindcast, we present the first Lagrangian decomposition of the meridional heat transport at 26.5N. We find that water parcels recirculating within the STG account for 37% (0.36 PW) of the total heat transport across 26.5N, more than twice that of the classical horizontal gyre component (15%). Our findings indicate that STG heat transport cannot be meaningfully distinguished from that of the basin-scale overturning since water parcels cooled within the gyre subsequently feed the northward, subsurface limb of the AMOC.

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Section: Lagrangian Particle Trackingcontrasting

confidence: 99%

Lagrangian Decomposition of the Atlantic Ocean Heat Transport at 26.5oN

Tooth,

Foukal,

Johns

et al. 2024

Preprint

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“…The ENSO signal has profound influences on the precipitations in China and its surrounding areas (Liu et al, 2022;Gao and Li, 2023), and the leading signal of the OHT in the WPWP to ENSO may play a role in the precipitation forecast over this region.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracking the variability of the western Pacific warm pool heat content over 1980–2020

Jin,

Liu,

Cao

et al. 2024

Front. Earth Sci.

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The western Pacific warm pool (WPWP) is a major thermal driver of atmospheric deep convection and global atmospheric circulation in the tropics, and changes in its ocean heat content (OHC) affect the local and global climates. Four state-of-the-art ocean reanalyses and one objective analysis were used to study the variations in the WPWP OHC, ocean heat content tendency (OHCT), and ocean heat transport (OHT). The variabilities of both the OHC and OHCT integrated from 0 to 300 m are consistent between the datasets and are closely related to the El-Niño southern oscillation cycle. The integrated OHC from 0 to 2000 m shows an overall increasing trend in the WPWP. The WPWP mainly gains heat from the eastern boundary and loses heat from the northern boundary. The heat transport through the eastern boundary of the WPWP is mainly facilitated by the westward flowing south and north equatorial currents as well as the equatorial countercurrent around the depth of the thermocline, whereas the OHT at the northern boundary is mainly driven by the western boundary current of the Pacific Ocean, which shows complex flow structures.

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“…Historically, models have tended to underestimate the MHT at latitudes near 26° N in the Atlantic, even if producing realistic estimates of the AMOC strength. For example, Liu et al [ 80 ] recently showed that nearly all AMIP6 models (Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6; [ 81 ]) underestimated the MHT at 26° N, with the ensemble mean of all models over the period from 1985 to 2015 showing a mean MHT about 0.3 PW lower than the 1.2 PW estimate from RAPID. A similar bias is found in coupled models, where a large ensemble of models from CMIP6 were shown to underestimate the MHT by about 0.2 PW relative to the RAPID MHT estimate [ 82 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Most of the commonly used air–sea heat flux datasets (NOC, NCEP, ERA5, JRA-55, MERRA-2, CERES + OAFlux) also underestimate the MHT at 26° N, some of them quite considerably, due to too-weak surface heat losses over the North Atlantic [ 69 , 80 ]. Recent estimates using ‘residual' methods (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…top of atmosphere net radiative flux minus accumulated total column atmospheric energy divergence) have shown MHT estimates that are closer to the observed RAPID value. For example, Trenberth & Fasullo [ 2 ] find a mean MHT value of 1.04 PW at 26° N for the period from 2014 to 2016 (compared with a mean MHT of 1.18 from the overlapping RAPID period), while Liu et al [ 80 ] find a mean MHT of 1.22 PW for the period from 2004 to 2017 (compared with 1.19 PW from RAPID over that same period). The residual methods also appear to more faithfully reproduce the temporal variability of the MHT observed during RAPID, after taking into account variations of the total ocean heat storage over the North Atlantic poleward of 26° N [ 2 , 69 , 80 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards two decades of Atlantic Ocean mass and heat transports at 26.5° N

Johns,

Elipot,

Smeed

et al. 2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Continuous measurements of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and meridional ocean heat transport at 26.5° N began in April 2004 and are currently available through December 2020. Approximately 90% of the total meridional heat transport (MHT) at 26.5° N is carried by the zonally averaged overturning circulation, and an even larger fraction of the heat transport variability (approx. 95%) is explained by the variability of the zonally averaged overturning. A physically based separation of the heat transport into large-scale AMOC, gyre and shallow wind-driven overturning components remains challenging and requires new investigations and approaches. We review the major interannual changes in the AMOC and MHT that have occurred over the nearly two decades of available observations and their documented impacts on North Atlantic heat content. Changes in the flow-weighted temperature of the Florida Current (Gulf Stream) over the past two decades are now taken into account in the estimates of MHT, and have led to an increased heat transport relative to the AMOC strength in recent years. Estimates of the MHT at 26.5° N from coupled models and various surface flux datasets still tend to show low biases relative to the observations, but indirect estimates based on residual methods (top of atmosphere net radiative flux minus atmospheric energy divergence) have shown recent promise in reproducing the heat transport and its interannual variability. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Atlantic overturning: new observations and challenges’.

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Discrepancies in Simulated Ocean Net Surface Heat Fluxes over the North Atlantic

Cited by 6 publications

References 108 publications

Lagrangian Decomposition of the Atlantic Ocean Heat Transport at 26.5oN

Lagrangian Decomposition of the Atlantic Ocean Heat Transport at 26.5oN

Tracking the variability of the western Pacific warm pool heat content over 1980–2020

Towards two decades of Atlantic Ocean mass and heat transports at 26.5° N

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