Identification

Title

The impact of climate change on ocean submesoscale activity

Abstract

Global warming may modify submesoscale activity in the ocean through changes in the mixed layer depth (MLD) and lateral buoyancy gradients. As a case study we consider a region in the NE Atlantic under present and future climate conditions, using a time-slice method and global and nested regional ocean models. The high resolution regional model reproduces the strong seasonal cycle in submesoscale activity observed under present-day conditions. Focusing on the well-resolved winter months, in the future, with a reduction in the MLD, there is a substantial reduction in submesoscale activity, an associated decrease in kinetic energy (KE) at the mesoscale, and the vertical buoyancy flux induced by submesoscale activity is reduced by a factor of 2. When submesoscale activity is suppressed, by increasing the parameterized lateral mixing in the model, the climate change induces a larger reduction in winter MLDs while there is less of a change in KE at the mesoscale. A scaling for the vertical buoyancy flux proposed by (Fox-Kemper et al., 2008; doi:10.1175/2007JPO3792.1) based on the properties of mixed layer instability (MLI), is found to capture much of the seasonal and future changes to the flux in terms of regional averages as well as the spatial structure, although it over predicts the reduction in the flux in the winter months. The vertical buoyancy flux when the mixed layer is relatively shallow is significantly greater than that given by the scaling based on MLI, suggesting during these times other processes (besides MLI) may dominate submesoscale buoyancy fluxes.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7bg2sdq

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-05-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact