Using zonal surface heat flux asymmetry to reveal new features of Southern Ocean air-sea interaction ...

• Main Authors: Josey, Simon, Grist, Jeremy, Mecking, Jenny, Moat, Ben, Schulz, Eric
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences 2023
• Subjects: Drake Passage; Indian; Pacific; Southern Ocean
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.57757/iugg23-0690; https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5016798

<!--!introduction!--> New results on Southern Ocean heat exchange and wind forcing are presented with a focus on zonal asymmetry between surface ocean heat gain in the Atlantic/Indian sector and heat loss in the Pacific sector. The asymmetry arises from an intersector variation in the humidity gradient between the sea surface and near surface atmosphere. This gradient increases by 60% in the Pacific sector enabling a 20 Wm -2 stronger latent heat loss compared to the Atlantic/Indian sector. A new zonal asymmetry metric is used for intercomparison of atmospheric reanalyses and CMIP6 climate simulations. CMIP6 has weaker Atlantic/Indian sector heat gain compared to the reanalyses primarily due to Indian Ocean sector differences. The potential for surface flux buoys to provide an observation-based counterpart to the asymmetry metric is explored. Over the past decade, flux buoys have been deployed at two sites (south of Tasmania and upstream of Drake Passage). The data record provided by these moorings is ... : The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023) ...