Identification

Title

Estimates of meridional atmosphere and ocean heat transports

Abstract

New estimates of the poleward energy transport based on atmospheric reanalyses from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP-NCAR) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts are presented. The analysis focuses on the period from February 1985 to April 1989 when there are reliable top-of-the-atmosphere radiation data from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment. Annual mean poleward transports of atmospheric energy peak at 5.0 ± 0.14 PW at 43°N and with similar values near 40°S, which is much larger than previous estimates. The standard deviation of annual and zonal mean variability from 1979 to 1998 is mostly less than 0.15 PW (1%-3%). Results are evaluated by computing the implied ocean heat transports, utilizing physical constraints, and comparing them with direct oceanographic estimates and those from successful stable coupled climate models that have been run without artificial flux adjustments for several centuries. Reasonable agreement among ocean transports is obtained with the disparate methods when the results from NCEP-NCAR reanalyses based upon residually derived (not model-generated) methods are used, and this suggests that improvements have occurred and convergence is to the true values. Atmospheric transports adjusted for spurious subterranean transports over land areas are inferred and show that poleward ocean heat transports are dominant only between 0° and 17°N. At 35° latitude, at which the peak total poleward transport in each hemisphere occurs, the atmospheric transport accounts for 78% of the total in the Northern Hemisphere and 92% in the Southern Hemisphere. In general, a much greater portion of the required poleward transport is contributed by the atmosphere than the ocean, as compared with previous estimates.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d79w0gtf

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

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reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2001-08-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Copyright 2001 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the AMS's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license form the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy, available on the AMS Web site located at (http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS) or from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or copyright@ametsoc.org.

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

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