New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme

The frontal structure of the Southern Ocean is investigated using a sophisticated frontal detection methodology, the Wavelet/Higher Order Statistics Enhancement (WHOSE) method, introduced in \cite{Chapman2014}. This methodology is applied to 21 years of daily gridded sea-surface height (SSH) data to...

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Main Author: Chapman, Christopher C.
Format: Report
Language:unknown
Published: arXiv 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1609.09616
https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.09616
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spelling ftdatacite:10.48550/arxiv.1609.09616 2023-05-15T18:24:56+02:00 New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme Chapman, Christopher C. 2016 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1609.09616 https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.09616 unknown arXiv arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph FOS Physical sciences Preprint Article article CreativeWork 2016 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1609.09616 2022-04-01T11:15:15Z The frontal structure of the Southern Ocean is investigated using a sophisticated frontal detection methodology, the Wavelet/Higher Order Statistics Enhancement (WHOSE) method, introduced in \cite{Chapman2014}. This methodology is applied to 21 years of daily gridded sea-surface height (SSH) data to obtain daily maps of the locations of the fronts. By forming `heat-maps' of the frontal occurrence frequency and then approximating these heat-maps by a superposition of simple functions, the time-mean locations of the fronts, as well as a measure of their capacity to meander, are obtained and related to the frontal locations found by previous studies. The spatial and temporal variability of the frontal structure is then considered. The number of fronts is found to be highly variable throughout the Southern Ocean, increasing (`splitting') downstream of large bathymetric features and decreasing (`merging') in regions where the fronts are tightly controlled by the underlying topography. In contrast, frontal meandering remains relatively constant. Contrary to many previous studies, little no southward migration of the fronts over the 1993-2014 time period is found, and there is only weak sensitivity to atmospheric forcing related to SAM or ENSO. The reasons for the discrepancy between this study and previous studies using contour methods are investigated and it is shown that the spatial variability of the frontal structure is not tied to the underlying sea-surface height. It is argued that the results of studies using sea-surface height contours to define front must be interpreted with care. : Submitted for publication in the Journal of Physical Oceanography Report Southern Ocean DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) Southern Ocean
institution Open Polar
collection DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology)
op_collection_id ftdatacite
language unknown
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph
FOS Physical sciences
spellingShingle Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph
FOS Physical sciences
Chapman, Christopher C.
New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme
topic_facet Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics physics.ao-ph
FOS Physical sciences
description The frontal structure of the Southern Ocean is investigated using a sophisticated frontal detection methodology, the Wavelet/Higher Order Statistics Enhancement (WHOSE) method, introduced in \cite{Chapman2014}. This methodology is applied to 21 years of daily gridded sea-surface height (SSH) data to obtain daily maps of the locations of the fronts. By forming `heat-maps' of the frontal occurrence frequency and then approximating these heat-maps by a superposition of simple functions, the time-mean locations of the fronts, as well as a measure of their capacity to meander, are obtained and related to the frontal locations found by previous studies. The spatial and temporal variability of the frontal structure is then considered. The number of fronts is found to be highly variable throughout the Southern Ocean, increasing (`splitting') downstream of large bathymetric features and decreasing (`merging') in regions where the fronts are tightly controlled by the underlying topography. In contrast, frontal meandering remains relatively constant. Contrary to many previous studies, little no southward migration of the fronts over the 1993-2014 time period is found, and there is only weak sensitivity to atmospheric forcing related to SAM or ENSO. The reasons for the discrepancy between this study and previous studies using contour methods are investigated and it is shown that the spatial variability of the frontal structure is not tied to the underlying sea-surface height. It is argued that the results of studies using sea-surface height contours to define front must be interpreted with care. : Submitted for publication in the Journal of Physical Oceanography
format Report
author Chapman, Christopher C.
author_facet Chapman, Christopher C.
author_sort Chapman, Christopher C.
title New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme
title_short New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme
title_full New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme
title_fullStr New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme
title_full_unstemmed New Perspectives on Frontal Variability in the Southern Ocean Using a Local Identification Scheme
title_sort new perspectives on frontal variability in the southern ocean using a local identification scheme
publisher arXiv
publishDate 2016
url https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1609.09616
https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.09616
geographic Southern Ocean
geographic_facet Southern Ocean
genre Southern Ocean
genre_facet Southern Ocean
op_rights arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive license
http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
op_doi https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1609.09616
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