Atmospheric Rivers Contribute to Summer Surface Buoyancy Forcing in the Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean

These are the Wave glider data used in the analysis and creation of figures in Edholm et al. 2022: Atmospheric Rivers Contribute to Summer Surface Buoyancy Forcing in the Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean in support of open-code, transparency, and repeatability. Abstract: Atmospheric rivers (ARs...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Edholm, Johan M., Swart, Sebastiaan, du Plessis, Marcel D., Nicholson, Sarah-Anne
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Wave Glider
Southen Ocean
Sea surface temperature
Sea surface salinity
Wind speed
Weddell Sea
Southern Ocean
Weddell
Edholm
Online Access:https://zenodo.org/record/5079732
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5079732
Description
Summary:These are the Wave glider data used in the analysis and creation of figures in Edholm et al. 2022: Atmospheric Rivers Contribute to Summer Surface Buoyancy Forcing in the Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean in support of open-code, transparency, and repeatability. Abstract: Atmospheric rivers (ARs) dominate moisture transport globally; however, it is unknown what impact ARs have on surface ocean buoyancy. This study explores the surface buoyancy gained by ARs using high-resolution surface observations from a Wave Glider deployed in the subpolar Southern Ocean (54°S, 0°E) between 19 December 2018 and 12 February 2019 (55 days). When ARs combine with storms, the associated precipitation is significantly enhanced (189%). In addition, the daily accumulation of AR-induced precipitation provides a buoyancy gain to the surface ocean equivalent to warming by surface heat fluxes. Over the 55 days, ARs accounted for 47% of the total precipitation equating to 10% of the summer surface ocean buoyancy gain. This study indicates that ARs play an important role in the summer precipitation over the subpolar Southern Ocean and that they can alter the upper-ocean buoyancy budget from synoptic to seasonal timescales. This data collection were supported by the following grants: NRF-SANAP (SNA170522231782 and SANAP200324510487)

Similar Items