High‐Frequency Submesoscale Motions Enhance the Upward Vertical Heat Transport in the Global Ocean
Name
JGR Oceans - 2020 - Su - High‐Frequency Submesoscale Motions Enhance the Upward Vertical Heat Transport in the Global Ocean.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
10.89 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
2e857c42ba9c644e2e1733ba1d9bc1aa
Author(s)
Su, Zhan
Torres, Hector
Klein, Patrice
Thompson, Andrew F
Siegelman, Lia
Wang, Jinbo
Menemenlis, Dimitris
Hill, Christopher
Date Issued
August 18, 2020
Journal
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Citation
Su, Z., Torres, H., Klein, P., Thompson, A. F., Siegelman, L., Wang, J., et al. (2020). High-frequency submesoscale motions enhance the upward vertical heat transport in the global ocean. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 125, e2020JC016544.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The rate of ocean heat uptake depends on the mechanisms that transport heat between the surface and the ocean interior. A recent study found that the vertical heat transport driven by motions with scales smaller than 0.5° (submesoscales) and frequencies smaller than 1 day−1 is upward. This transport competes with the other major components of the global heat transport, namely, the downward heat transport explained by the large-scale wind-driven vertical circulation and vertical diffusion at small scales and the upward heat transport associated with mesoscale eddies (50- to 300-km size). The contribution from motions with small spatial scales (<0.5°) and frequencies larger than 1 day−1, including internal gravity waves, has never been explicitly estimated. This study investigates this high-frequency (subdaily) submesoscale contribution to the global heat transport. The major result of this study, based on the analysis of a high-resolution ocean model, is that including this high-frequency contribution surprisingly doubles the upward heat transport due to submesoscales in winter in the global ocean. This contribution typically concerns depths down to 200–500 m and can have a magnitude of up to 500 W m−2 in terms of wintertime heat fluxes at 40-m depth, which causes a significant upward heat transport of ~7 PW when integrated over the global ocean. Thus, such submesoscale heat transport, which is not resolved by climate models, impacts the heat uptake in the global ocean. The mechanisms involved in these results still need to be understood, which should be the scope of future work.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1029/2020jc016544
