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Special Session 5: Ocean-atmosphere interaction, multi-scale climate variability and their implication for biogeochemical processes |
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The Atlantic Subpolar Gyre ocean heat content variability and its decompositions
Wednesday 11th @ 1110-1130
Room 1
Weiwei Zhang* , Xiamen University
Xiao-Hai Yan, University of Delaware; Xiamen University
Presenter Email: zwwpku@hotmail.com
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| The subsurface ocean heat uptake has important implications on the earth’s energy balance and global climate change due to the greenhouse gas increase. The Subpolar Gyre (SPG) has been found to be a significant heat sink during the recent surface warming hiatus from 1998-2014. Here, we used ocean heat content dataset mapped from in situ measurements to show the great spatial disparities in the SPG, which is enhanced during the global surface warming hiatus. We found that the SPG was warming in the west and cooling in the east during the hiatus. The temperature variations in the two regions were highly synchronized before 1995, when the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) maintains a negative or positive phase, but the variations start to diverge after 1995. Their links to the NAO also weakens, when it becomes neutral or frequently flips signs. We further analyzed the warming and cooling periods in the eastern and western SPG, and decomposed the temperature changes into spice and heaving components along the potential density surface. The results show spice domination in the west, but for the east, the spice is related to the warming and the heaving is related to the cooling. Our finding suggests that the eastern SPG cooling may not result from the recent declining of Atlantic Meridional Circulation. |
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