The impact of polar mesoscale storms on northeast Atlantic ocean circulation (Invited)
Abstract
Every year thousands of mesoscale (<1000 km) storms cross the climatically sensitive sub-polar regions of the world's oceans. These storms are frequently too small, or short-lived, to be captured in meteorological reanalyses or numerical climate prediction models. As a result, the magnitude of the near-surface wind speeds and heat fluxes are considerably under-represented over the world's oceans where the atmosphere influences mixing, deep convection, upwelling, and deep water mass formation. Numerical models must, however, realistically simulate these processes in order to accurately predict future changes in the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) and the climate system. Implementing a parameterization to simulate mesoscale cyclones in the atmospheric fields driving an ocean model produced air-sea fluxes in remarkable agreement with observations. Over the Nordic Seas we found that mesoscale cyclones increased the depth, frequency and area of open ocean deep convection. At Denmark Strait we found a significant increase in the southward transport of Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW); the deep water mass that plays a major role in driving the Atlantic MOC. Further south there was an increase in the cyclonic rotation of the sub-polar gyres and an increase in the northward transport of heat into the region. We conclude that polar mesoscale cyclones play an important role in driving the large-scale ocean circulation and so must be simulated globally in order to make accurate short-term climate predictions. An illustration of the effectiveness of our polar mesoscale parameterization. Panels show a 6-hourly snapshot of 10-m wind speed for (left) ECMWF ERA-40, (middle) ERA-40 with a polar mesoscale cyclone parameterized (right) satellite derived wind speed. The satellite data reveal a polar mesoscale cyclone over the Norwegian Sea with a diameter of ~400 km. The standard ERA-40 reanalysis (~1 deg.) does not capture this vortex. Parameterizing the cyclone as a Rankine vortex produces a considerably more accurate wind field.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFM.A42A..01C
- Keywords:
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- 3329 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES Mesoscale meteorology;
- 3339 ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES Ocean/atmosphere interactions;
- 4504 OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL Air/sea interactions;
- 4553 OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL Overflows