Identification

Title

Bjerknes-like compensation in the wintertime North Pacific

Abstract

Observational and model evidence has been mounting that mesoscale eddies play an important role in air–sea interaction in the vicinity of western boundary currents and can affect the jet stream storm track. What is less clear is the interplay between oceanic and atmospheric meridional heat transport in the vicinity of western boundary currents. It is first shown that variability in the North Pacific, particularly in the Kuroshio Extension region, simulated by a high-resolution fully coupled version of the Community Earth System Model matches observations with similar mechanisms and phase relationships involved in the variability. The Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) is correlated with sea surface height anomalies generated in the central Pacific that propagate west preceding Kuroshio Extension variability with a ~3–4-yr lag. It is then shown that there is a near compensation of O(0.1) PW (PW ≡ 10¹⁵ W) between wintertime atmospheric and oceanic meridional heat transport on decadal time scales in the North Pacific. This compensation has characteristics of Bjerknes compensation and is tied to the mesoscale eddy activity in the Kuroshio Extension region.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d77082ks

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

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2015-03-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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Conformity

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Use constraints

Copyright 2015 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 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

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