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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Ejection of Dust From the Ocean as a Potential Source of Marine Ice Nucleating Particles

Oceans are, generally, relatively weak sources of ice nucleating particles (INPs). Thus, dust transported from terrestrial regions can dominate atmospheric INP concentrations even in remote marine regions. Studies of ocean-emitted INPs have focused upon sea spray aerosols containing biogenic species. Even though large concentrations of dust are transported over marine regions, resuspended dust has never been explicitly considered as another possible source of ocean-emitted INPs. Current models assume that deposited dust is not re-emitted from surface waters. Our laboratory studies of aerosol particles produced from coastal seawater and synthetic seawater doped with dust show that dust can indeed be ejected from water during bubble bursting. INP concentration measurements show these ejected dust particles retain ice nucleating activity. Doping synthetic seawater to simulate a strong dust deposition event produced INPs active at temperatures colder than -13 °C and INP concentrations one to two orders of magnitude greater than either lab sea spray or marine boundary layer measurements. The relevance of these laboratory findings is highlighted by single particle composition measurements along the Californian coast where at least 9% of dust particles were mixed with sea salt. Additionally, global modeling studies show that resuspension of dust from the ocean could exert the most impact over the Southern Ocean, where ocean-emitted INPs are thought to dominate atmospheric INP populations. More work characterizing the factors governing the resuspension of dust particles is required to understand the potential impact upon clouds.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Forced Patterns of Sea Level Rise in the Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble From 1920 to 2100

To provide context for observed sea level rise, the forced response (FR) in dynamic sea level (DSL) during the 20th and 21st centuries is examined in the Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble (LE). After accounting for simulation drift, which in the LE is sizable, the DSL FR is found to be complex, both in space and time. Its evolving character is suggested to arise from both the diversity and transient evolution of climate forcing agents and the slow adjustment timescales of the intermediate and deep oceans. Nonetheless, various intervals of spatially coherent change simulated for the recent past and near future are identified, and their characteristics and associated driving mechanisms are identified and discussed. The mid- to late-20th century DSL FR is characterized by an hemispherically asymmetric pattern of change, with depressed rates of rise in the northern oceans. There is also a dipole of change in the Southern Ocean caused by changes in near-surface zonal winds. Through the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a different pattern of rise emerges with elevated rates in the tropics and depressed rates at high latitudes. Zonal and interbasin variations characterize both intervals and involve the pattern and depth of anomalous ocean heat content storage and spatial contrasts in the expansion coefficient tied mainly to base state temperature, with greater rates of rise in warm regions per unit warming. Finally, the relative roles of surface flux and ocean convergence anomalies are examined.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Understanding processes that control dust spatial distributions with global climate models and satellite observations

Dust aerosol is important in modulating the climate system at local and global scales, yet its spatiotemporal distributions simulated by global climate models (GCMs) are highly uncertain. In this study, we evaluate the spatiotemporal variations of dust extinction profiles and dust optical depth (DOD) simulated by the Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1) and version 2 (CESM2), the Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SMv1), and the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) against satellite retrievals from Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR). We find that CESM1, CESM2, and E3SMv1 underestimate dust transport to remote regions. E3SMv1 performs better than CESM1 and CESM2 in simulating dust transport and the northern hemispheric DOD due to its higher mass fraction of fine dust. CESM2 performs the worst in the Northern Hemisphere due to its lower dust emission than in the other two models but has a better dust simulation over the Southern Ocean due to the overestimation of dust emission in the Southern Hemisphere. DOD from MERRA-2 agrees well with CALIOP DOD in remote regions due to its higher mass fraction of fine dust and the assimilation of aerosol optical depth. The large disagreements in the dust extinction profiles and DOD among CALIOP, MODIS, and MISR retrievals make the model evaluation of dust spatial distributions challenging. Our study indicates the importance of representing dust emission, dry/wet deposition, and size distribution in GCMs in correctly simulating dust spatiotemporal distributions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Sea Level Rise in the CESM Large Ensemble: The Role of Individual Climate Forcings and Consequences for the Coming Decades

The emergence of a spatial pattern in the externally forced response (FR) of dynamic sea level (DSL) during the altimeter era has recently been demonstrated using climate models but our understanding of its initial emergence, drivers, and implications for the future is poor. Here the anthropogenic forcings of the DSL pattern are explored using the Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble (CESM-LE) and Single-Forcing Large Ensemble, a newly available set of simulations where values of individual forcing agents remain fixed at 1920 levels, allowing for an estimation of their effects. Statistically significant contributions to the DSL FR are identified for greenhouse gases (GHGs) and industrial aerosols (AERs), with particularly strong contributions resulting from AERs in the mid-twentieth century and GHGs in the late twentieth and twenty-first century. Secondary, but important, contributions are identified for biomass burning aerosols in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean in the mid-twentieth century, and for stratospheric ozone in the Southern Ocean during the late twentieth century. Key to understanding regional DSL patterns are ocean heat content and salinity anomalies, which are driven by surface heat and freshwater fluxes, ocean dynamics, and the spatial structure of seawater thermal expansivity. Finally, potential implications for the interpretation of DSL during the satellite era and the longer records from tide gauges are suggested as a topic for future research.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Assessing the sequestration time scales of some ocean-based carbon dioxide reduction strategies

Abstract Ocean-based carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) removal (CDR) strategies are an important part of the portfolio of approaches needed to achieve negative greenhouse gas emissions. Many ocean-based CDR strategies rely on injecting CO 2 or organic carbon (that will eventually become CO 2 ) into the ocean interior, or enhancing the ocean’s biological pump. These approaches will not result in permanent sequestration, because ocean currents will eventually return the injected CO 2 back to the surface, where it will be brought into equilibrium with the atmosphere. Here, a model of steady state global ocean circulation and mixing is used to assess the time scales over which CO 2 injected in the ocean interior remains sequestered from the atmosphere. There will be a distribution of sequestration times for any single discharge location due to the infinite number of pathways connecting a location at depth with the sea surface. The resulting probability distribution is highly skewed with a long tail of very long transit times, making mean sequestration times much longer than typical time scales. Deeper discharge locations will sequester purposefully injected CO 2 much longer than shallower ones and median sequestration times are typically decades to centuries, and approach 1000 years in the deep North Pacific. Large differences in sequestration times occur both within and between the major ocean basins, with the Pacific and Indian basins generally having longer sequestration times than the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. Assessments made over a 50 year time horizon illustrates that most of the injected carbon will be retained for injection depths greater than 1000 m, with several geographic exceptions such as the Western North Atlantic. Ocean CDR strategies that increase upper ocean ecosystem productivity with the goal of exporting more carbon to depth will have mainly a short-term influence on atmospheric CO 2 levels because ∼70% will be transported back to the surface ocean within 50 years. The results presented here will help plan appropriate ocean CDR strategies that can help limit climate damage caused by fossil fuel CO 2 emissions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

A New Framework for the Attribution of Air‐Sea CO 2 Exchange

Abstract The air‐sea transfer of carbon dioxide can be viewed as a dynamic system through which atmospheric and oceanic processes push surface waters away from thermodynamic equilibrium, while diffusive gas transfer pulls them back toward local equilibrium. These push/pull processes drive significant sub‐seasonal, seasonal, and interannual variability in air‐sea carbon fluxes, the quantification of which is critical both for diagnosing the ocean response to fossil fuel emissions and for attempts to mitigate anthropogenic climate disruption through intentional modification of surface ocean biogeochemistry. In this study, we present a new approach for attributing air‐sea carbon fluxes to specific mechanisms. The new framework is first applied to a two‐box ocean nutrient and carbon cycle model as an illustrative example. Next, outputs from a regional eddy‐resolving model of the Southern Ocean are analyzed. The roles of multiple physical and biogeochemical processes are identified. The decomposition of the seasonal air‐sea carbon flux shows the dominant role of biological carbon pumps that are partially compensated by the transport convergence. Finally, the framework is used to diagnose the response to mesoscale iron and alkalinity release, explicitly quantifying transport feedback and eventual impacts on net air‐sea carbon flux. Ocean carbon transport has divergent influences between iron and alkalinity release, due to opposing near‐surface gradients of dissolved inorganic carbon. We suggest that our attribution framework may be a useful analytical technique for monitoring natural ocean carbon fluxes and quantifying the impacts of human intervention on the ocean carbon cycle.

Ito, Takamitsu [School of Earth and Atmospheric Sc↗
DOE OSTI2026

Advancing the quantification of aerosol-cloud interactions with the CALIPSO-CloudSat-Aqua/MODIS record

Aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions are assessed over the non-polar ocean using more than 11 years of combined Aqua-MODIS, CALIPSO-CALIOP, and CloudSat products. The analysis first shows the benefit of incorporating vertically resolved aerosol extinction coefficient (σext) in aerosol-cloud interactions (ACI) assessments, demonstrating that: σext vertically collocated with the cloud layer () correlates best with cloud droplet number concentration (Nd), column-integrated aerosol optical depth (AOD) cannot explain the Nd variability in the extratropics, and the S-shape of the AOD-Nd relationship reported in previous studies is not replicated when using instead of AOD, with a Nd- linearity more consistent with in-situ studies over the ocean. ACI metric, estimated as the log-scale regression between CALIOP and MODIS Nd reveals that the eastern Pacific is the region with the strongest ACI, followed by the Southern Ocean. The susceptibility of clouds to changes in their liquid water path (LWP) and frequency of precipitation followed a 2-step calculation by combining the Nd- regression (ACI) with the regression between these macrophysical variables and Nd. LWP susceptibility is negative (LWP decreases with aerosol loading) and statistically significant over the eastern Pacific, eastern Atlantic, and extratropics. In contrast, vast areas of the tropical and subtropical ocean feature negligible changes in LWP with aerosol. Precipitation frequency susceptibility is negative, but the values are only significant over the coastal eastern Pacific and Atlantic. The findings suggest that previous modeling assessments relying on AOD may need to be revisited by taking advantage of the synergy between passive and active sensors.

Li, Zhujun↗
DOE OSTI2022

On the Effect of Historical SST Patterns on Radiative Feedback

Here, we investigate the dependence of radiative feedback on the pattern of sea-surface temperature (SST) change in fourteen Atmospheric General Circulation Models (AGCMs) forced with observed variations in SST and sea-ice over the historical record from 1871 to near-present. We find that over 1871-1980, the Earth warmed with feedbacks largely consistent and strongly correlated with long term climate sensitivity feedbacks (diagnosed from corresponding atmosphere-ocean GCM abrupt 4xCO2 simulations). Post 1980 however, the Earth warmed with unusual trends in tropical Pacific SSTs (enhanced warming in the west, cooling in the east) and cooling in the Southern Ocean that drove climate feedback to be uncorrelated with – and indicating much lower climate sensitivity than – that expected for long-term CO 2 increase. We show that these conclusions are not strongly dependent on the AMIP II SST dataset used to force the AGCMs, though the magnitude of feedback post 1980 is generally smaller in nine AGCMs forced with alternative HadISST1 SST boundary conditions. We quantify a ‘pattern effect’ (defined as the difference between historical and longterm CO 2 feedback) equal to 0.48 ± 0.47 [5-95%] W m -2 K -1 for the time-period 1871-2010 when the AGCMs are forced with HadISST1 SSTs, or 0.70 ± 0.47 [5-95%] W m -2 K -1 when forced with AMIP II SSTs. Assessed changes in the Earth’s historical energy budget agree with the AGCM feedback estimates. Furthermore satellite observations of changes in top-of-atmosphere radiative fluxes since 1985 suggest that the pattern effect was particularly strong over recent decades but may be waning post 2014.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Convergent evolution and horizontal gene transfer in Arctic Ocean microalgae

Microbial communities in the world ocean are affected strongly by oceanic circulation, creating characteristic marine biomes. The high connectivity of most of the ocean makes it difficult to disentangle selective retention of colonizing genotypes (with traits suited to biome specific conditions) from evolutionary selection, which would act on founder genotypes over time. The Arctic Ocean is exceptional with limited exchange with other oceans and ice covered since the last ice age. To test whether Arctic microalgal lineages evolved apart from algae in the global ocean, we sequenced four lineages of microalgae isolated from Arctic waters and sea ice. Here we show convergent evolution and highlight geographically limited HGT as an ecological adaptive force in the form of PFAM complements and horizontal acquisition of key adaptive genes. Notably, ice-binding proteins were acquired and horizontally transferred among Arctic strains. A comparison with Tara Oceans metagenomes and metatranscriptomes confirmed mostly Arctic distributions of these IBPs. The phylogeny of Arctic-specific genes indicated that these events were independent of bacterial-sourced HGTs in Antarctic Southern Ocean microalgae.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

What causes the spread of model projections of ocean dynamic sea-level change in response to greenhouse gas forcing?

Abstract Sea levels of different atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) respond to climate change forcing in different ways, representing a crucial uncertainty in climate change research. We isolate the role of the ocean dynamics in setting the spatial pattern of dynamic sea-level ( ζ ) change by forcing several AOGCMs with prescribed identical heat, momentum (wind) and freshwater flux perturbations. This method produces a ζ projection spread comparable in magnitude to the spread that results from greenhouse gas forcing, indicating that the differences in ocean model formulation are the cause, rather than diversity in surface flux change. The heat flux change drives most of the global pattern of ζ change, while the momentum and water flux changes cause locally confined features. North Atlantic heat uptake causes large temperature and salinity driven density changes, altering local ocean transport and ζ . The spread between AOGCMs here is caused largely by differences in their regional transport adjustment, which redistributes heat that was already in the ocean prior to perturbation. The geographic details of the ζ change in the North Atlantic are diverse across models, but the underlying dynamic change is similar. In contrast, the heat absorbed by the Southern Ocean does not strongly alter the vertically coherent circulation. The Arctic ζ change is dissimilar across models, owing to differences in passive heat uptake and circulation change. Only the Arctic is strongly affected by nonlinear interactions between the three air-sea flux changes, and these are model specific.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Antarctic shelf ocean warming and sea ice melt affected by projected El Niño changes

Antarctic shelf ocean warming affects melt of ice shelf/sheets and sea ice but projected changes vary vastly across climate models. A projected increase in El Niño variability has been found to slow future mid-latitude Southern Ocean warming but how this impacts the Antarctic shelf ocean is unknown. Here we show that a projected increase in El Niño variability accelerates Antarctic shelf ocean warming, hastening ice shelf/sheet melt but slowing sea ice reduction.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

Human-induced changes to the global ocean water masses and their time of emergence

The World Ocean is rapidly changing, with global and regional modification of temperature and salinity, resulting in widespread and irreversible impacts. While the most pronounced observed temperature and salinity changes are located in the upper ocean, changes in water masses at depth have been identified and will probably strengthen in the future. In this study, using 11 climate models, we define when anthropogenic temperature and salinity changes are expected to emerge from natural variability in the ocean interior along density surfaces. The models predict that in 2020, 20–55% of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian basins have an emergent anthropogenic signal; reaching 40–65% in 2050 and 55–80% in 2080. The well-ventilated Southern Ocean water masses emerge very rapidly, as early as the 1980–1990s, while the Northern Hemisphere water masses emerge in the 2010–2030s. Our results highlight the importance of maintaining and augmenting an ocean observing system capable of detecting and monitoring persistent anthropogenic changes.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Ice-shelf freshwater triggers for the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf melt tipping point in a global ocean–sea-ice model

Some ocean modeling studies have identified a potential tipping point from a low to a high basal melt regime beneath the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf (FRIS), Antarctica, with significant implications for subsequent Antarctic ice sheet mass loss. To date, investigation of the climate drivers and impacts of this possible event have been limited because ice-shelf cavities and ice-shelf melting are only now starting to be included in global climate models. Using a global ocean–sea-ice configuration of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) that represents both ocean circulations and melting within ice-shelf cavities, we explore freshwater triggers (iceberg melt and ice-shelf basal melt) of a transition to a high-melt regime at FRIS in a low-resolution (30 km in the Southern Ocean) global ocean–sea-ice model. We find that a realistic spatial distribution of iceberg melt fluxes is necessary to prevent the FRIS melt regime change from unrealistically occurring under historical-reanalysis-based atmospheric forcing. Further, improvement of the default parameterization for mesoscale eddy mixing significantly reduces a large regional fresh bias and weak Antarctic Slope Front structure, both of which precondition the model to melt regime change. Using two different stable model con figurations, we explore the sensitivity of FRIS melt regime change to regional ice-sheet freshwater fluxes. Through a series of sensitivity experiments prescribing incrementally increasing melt rates from the smaller, neighboring ice shelves in the eastern Weddell Sea, we demonstrate the potential for an ice-shelf melt “domino effect” should the upstream ice shelves experience increased melt rates. The experiments also reveal that modest ice-shelf melt biases in a model, especially at coarse ocean resolution where narrow continental shelf dynamics are not well resolved, can lead to an unrealistic melt regime change at downstream ice shelves. Thus, we find that remote connections between melt fluxes at different ice shelves are sensitive to baseline model conditions. Our results highlight both the potential and the peril of simulating prognostic Antarctic ice-shelf melt rates in a low-resolution global model.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Ice-shelf freshwater triggers for the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf melt tipping point in a global ocean–sea-ice model

Abstract. Some ocean modeling studies have identified a potential tipping point from a low to a high basal melt regime beneath the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf (FRIS), Antarctica, with significant implications for subsequent Antarctic ice sheet mass loss. To date, investigation of the climate drivers and impacts of this possible event have been limited because ice-shelf cavities and ice-shelf melting are only now starting to be included in global climate models. Using a global ocean–sea-ice configuration of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) that represents both ocean circulations and melting within ice-shelf cavities, we explore freshwater triggers (iceberg melt and ice-shelf basal melt) of a transition to a high-melt regime at FRIS in a low-resolution (30 km in the Southern Ocean) global ocean–sea-ice model. We find that a realistic spatial distribution of iceberg melt fluxes is necessary to prevent the FRIS melt regime change from unrealistically occurring under historical-reanalysis-based atmospheric forcing. Further, improvement of the default parameterization for mesoscale eddy mixing significantly reduces a large regional fresh bias and weak Antarctic Slope Front structure, both of which precondition the model to melt regime change. Using two different stable model configurations, we explore the sensitivity of FRIS melt regime change to regional ice-sheet freshwater fluxes. Through a series of sensitivity experiments prescribing incrementally increasing melt rates from the smaller, neighboring ice shelves in the eastern Weddell Sea, we demonstrate the potential for an ice-shelf melt “domino effect” should the upstream ice shelves experience increased melt rates. The experiments also reveal that modest ice-shelf melt biases in a model, especially at coarse ocean resolution where narrow continental shelf dynamics are not well resolved, can lead to an unrealistic melt regime change at downstream ice shelves. Thus, we find that remote connections between melt fluxes at different ice shelves are sensitive to baseline model conditions. Our results highlight both the potential and the peril of simulating prognostic Antarctic ice-shelf melt rates in a low-resolution global model.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Biogeochemical Equilibrium Responses to Maximal Productivity in High Nutrient Low Chlorophyll Regions

Whether ocean iron fertilization in high nutrient low chlorophyll (HNLC) regions is a practical geoengineering strategy to combat climate warming has been debated because the fate of absorbed carbon by the ocean remains unclear. Here, we use an optimized oceanic biogeochemical inverse model to explore the equilibrium responses to increased productivity in major HNLC regions. We find that an overall downward shift of nutrients and carbon from the surface and intermediate to the deep waters with maximal productivity in the HNLC Southern Ocean (SO), North Pacific (NP) and eastern equatorial Pacific (EP). The efficiency of soft tissue pump is increased by 37.8%, 2.7% and 5.4% in the SO, EP and NP simulation while atmospheric CO 2 concentration is drawn down by 45.1, 3.4 and 6.7 ppm, respectively. Meanwhile, global mean oxygen is decreased by 21.1%, 1.3% and 2.4% in the SO, EP and NP simulation, accompanied by an expansion of oxygen minimum zones by 400%, 26% and 63%, respectively. Our study indicates that iron fertilization has the potential to be an effective geoengineering approach to mitigate climate warming but also has a strong impact on the development of ocean hypoxia.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Polar algae flaunt their zinc assets

Metal ions have been at the centre of pivotal points in the evolution of extant life. Oxygen-evolving photosynthesis, which irrevocably reshaped the geochemistry and biology of our planet, has an absolute requirement for metal ions to harvest light, split water and transfer electrons. Access to abundant oxygen then led to the propagation of organisms capable of oxidative metabolism, a process that is also dependent on metal ions for electron transfer and reduction of molecular oxygen. Because of the essential links between metal ions and the proteins that require them to function, as well as changes in metal bioavailability through time, metals have shaped the trajectories that evolution can take. Iron typically steals this show, but with access to whole-genome sequences and transcriptomes, the imprint that zinc has made on biology is coming into focus. Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Ye and colleagues present new insights into the complex connections between zinc bioavailability, adaptation of algae to the polar oceans and the evolution of regulatory networks. By combining field and laboratory-based analyses, the authors suggest that expanded families of zinc-binding proteins have enabled the green alga Microglena sp. YARC to flourish in the harsh conditions of the polar Southern Ocean (Fig. 1). As the waters where this alga occurs are known for their enrichment of zinc, the authors further propose that availability of this metal ion was directly responsible for successful microalgal colonization of polar oceans. To test this hypothesis, the authors compare meta-transcriptomes collected from pole-to-pole and find positive correlations between higher copy numbers for transcripts encoding putative zinc-binding proteins, higher latitudes, lower surface temperatures and dissolved zinc.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

The influence of variability in meridional over turning on global ocean circulation

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning circulation (AMOC) is an important global scale circulation and changes in AMOC can induce significant regional and global climate impacts. In this work, we study the stability of AMOC and its influence on global ocean circulation and the surface climate though analyzing a set of sensitivity experiments using the Community Climate System Model version 1 (CESM1). Results show that a collapsed AMOC can induce changes in global ocean circulation, such as reduced (or reversed) Bering Strait transport, weakened Indonesia throughflow and Agulhas current, but strengthened Drake Passage transport. It also changes the global wind pattern and surface temperature, such as a seesaw-like surface temperature change between Northern and Southern Hemispheres, a weakening of Indian-Australia summer monsoon, a southward shift of the Southern ocean westerlies, etc. We also found that AMOC and the Pacific deep meridional overturning circulation (or PMOC) do not form a natural seesaw under modern day climate and geography. A collapsed AMOC (active PMOC) is not stable under modern conditions if there is no additional freshwater (salt) input in the subpolar North Atlantic (Pacific), suggesting that the modern mean state of AMOC (PMOC) does not depend on local haline forcing although its variability and changes do.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Ocean Mesoscale and Frontal-Scale Ocean–Atmosphere Interactions and Influence on Large-Scale Climate: A Review

Two decades of high-resolution satellite observations and climate modeling studies have indicated strong ocean–atmosphere coupled feedback mediated by ocean mesoscale processes, including semipermanent and meandrous SST fronts, mesoscale eddies, and filaments. The air–sea exchanges in latent heat, sensible heat, momentum, and carbon dioxide associated with this so-called mesoscale air–sea interaction are robust near the major western boundary currents, Southern Ocean fronts, and equatorial and coastal upwelling zones, but they are also ubiquitous over the global oceans wherever ocean mesoscale processes are active. Current theories, informed by rapidly advancing observational and modeling capabilities, have established the importance of mesoscale and frontal-scale air–sea interaction processes for understanding large-scale ocean circulation, biogeochemistry, and weather and climate variability. However, numerous challenges remain to accurately diagnose, observe, and simulate mesoscale air–sea interaction to quantify its impacts on large-scale processes. This article provides a comprehensive review of key aspects pertinent to mesoscale air–sea interaction, synthesizes current understanding with remaining gaps and uncertainties, and provides recommendations on theoretical, observational, and modeling strategies for future air–sea interaction research.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗