| Summary: | The data included in this repository was used to generate the figures in the submitted manuscript "Storms regulate Southern Ocean summer warming" by du Plessis and co-authors. Abstract: "Sea surface temperature (SST) in the Southern Ocean (SO) is the fingerprint of ocean heat uptake and critical for air-sea interactions. However, SO SST is biased warm in climate models, reflecting our limited understanding of the mechanisms that set its magnitude and variability. An important factor driving SST variability is synoptic-scale weather systems, such as storms, yet their impacts are difficult to directly observe. Using in-situ observations from underwater and surface robotic vehicles in the subpolar SO, we show evidence that storms regulate the summer evolution of SST through altering the mixed layer effective heat capacity and entraining colder water from below. Through these mechanisms, we determine that interannual variations in SO SST reflect changes in storm intensity and prevalence, which, in turn, are driven by the Southern Annular Mode. Our results demonstrate a causal link between storm forcing and lower frequency SST variability, which has implications for addressing SST biases in climate models." Observations The observations in this study were made as a part of the SOSCEx-STORM experiment, which fits into the larger observational programme the Southern Ocean Seasonal Cycle Experiment (Swart et al. 2012). SOSCEx-STORM undertook a twinned deployment of a Wave Glider and a profiling Slocum glider which were piloted in conjunction with each other. The platforms were deployed and retrieved from the R/V Agulhas II at 54°S, 0°E, south of the Polar Front, and sampled together between 20 December 2018 and 8 March 2019. Slocum glider data The glider was equipped with a continuously pumped Seabird Slocum Glider CTD, which was processed with the GEOMAR MATLAB toolbox and vertically gridded to 1 m depth intervals. Relevant data name: slocum_grid_processed.nc Slocum glider Microstructure data: The Webb Teledyne G2 ...
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