Impact of Submesoscale Sea Surface Temperature Variability on Bulk Air-Sea Fluxes
Madelaine Rosevear
One way in which the oceans affect weather and climate is by supplying heat and moisture to the lower atmosphere, which drives atmospheric convection and circulation. In turn, surface winds, heat loss, and evaporation drive ocean currents across a range of scales—including the submesoscale (0.1–10 km)—redistributing heat and creating coupled feedbacks with the atmosphere. Accurate estimates of air–sea exchanges of heat, moisture, and momentum are therefore essential for improving weather and climate predictions. Here, we explore how submesoscale sea surface temperature (SST) variability affects the structure of the atmospheric boundary layer and bulk fluxes of heat, momentum, and moisture. We use idealised large-eddy simulations with Breeze.jl—a GPU accelerated, anelastic model based on the ocean model Oceananigans—to simulate a convective atmospheric boundary layer over SST fields with and without submesoscale variability. By comparing these scenarios, we assess how SST heterogeneity alters vertical transport processes and bulk fluxes. This work will inform our approach to parameterising air-sea fluxes in both coarse-resolution and submesoscale resolving coupled models.
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