Effects of Ocean Optical Properties and Solar Attenuation on the Northwestern Atlantic Ocean Heat Content and Hurricane Intensity

Abstract

This study investigated how ocean optical properties and solar attenuation may affect the upper ocean temperature structure and ocean heat content (OHC). We employed a realistic three‐dimensional ocean circulation model for the northwestern Atlantic to simulate ocean states during the active Atlantic hurricane season of 2017. Sensitivity experiments were performed by coupling the ocean circulation prediction with either a conventional water type‐based solar attenuation model or an inherent optical properties (IOP)‐based model. Validations against in‐situ ocean temperature observations and remote sensing‐derived OHC showed that ocean simulations using the IOP‐based model outperformed simulations using the conventional water type‐based model in predicting sea surface temperature, upper ocean thermal structure, and OHC. An OHC‐hurricane intensity relationship derived for five major hurricanes in 2017 suggests that the ocean optical properties and the application of an appropriate solar attenuation model are important for the forecast of hurricane intensity.

A Dual-Band Model for the Vertical Distribution of Photosynthetically Available Radiation (PAR) in Stratified Waters

“…The diurnal and seasonal cycles of solar radiation and its underwater vertical distribution play an important role in ocean heat uptake (Lewis et al, 1990), which impacts sea-surface temperature and upper-ocean stratification (Liang and Wu, 2013;Pimentel et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2020) and in turn acts on ocean circulation (Liang and Wu, 2015) and air-sea interaction (Liu et al, 2021). Moreover, solar radiation also supports primary production and the entire marine ecosystem (Evans and Parslow, 1985;Bryant et al, 2016;Skákala et al, 2020).…”

“…Recently, illustrated that the use of PAR attenuation models with large uncertainties could lead to an error of 100% of estimated PAR at the half mixed layer depth, which would significantly impact the NPP estimates. PAR attenuation also highly affects the physical oceanography modeling of seawater temperature and mixing (Rochford et al, 2001;Liu et al, 2020;Liu et al, 2021), the diurnal cycles of sea-surface temperature (Pimentel et al, 2019), and even the atmospheric and ocean circulation (Gnanadesikan and Anderson, 2009). For example, Liu et al (2020) found that the uses of different PAR models would lead to differences up to 1.5°C-2°C in sea surface temperature.…”