Seasonal versus permanent thermocline warming by tropical cyclones
Name
Ferrari_Seasonal versus.pdf
Size
152.21 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
34ff7d1d47240c2b50660ab323da12b0
Author(s)
Ferrari, Raffaele
Mooring, Todd A.
Jansen, Malte Friedrich
Date Issued
February 2010
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
Citation
Jansen, Malte F., Raffaele Ferrari, and Todd A. Mooring. “Seasonal versus permanent thermocline warming by tropical cyclones.” Geophys. Res. Lett. 37.3 (2010): L03602. ©2010 American Geophysical Union.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Recent studies suggest that the enhanced upper ocean mixing caused by tropical cyclones significantly contributes to the ocean heat transport. However, existing studies that try to quantify this contribution make the assumption that all heat pumped below the mixed layer by tropical cyclones is finally released in higher latitudes. Tropical cyclones occur primarily during summer and early fall, when the ocean mixed layer is generally shallow. As the mixed layer deepens in the following winter, any warm anomaly deposited within the seasonal thermocline will be reabsorbed by the mixed layer and lost to the atmosphere. Analysis of satellite sea surface temperature and sea surface height data, together with climatological subsurface ocean data, suggests that only about one quarter of the heat that is mixed downward by tropical cyclones eventually makes it into the permanent thermocline.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate
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/10.1029/2009gl041808
