Role of Ocean Dynamics in the Seasonal Hadley Cell:A Response to Idealized Arctic Amplification

How atmospheric and oceanic circulations respond to Arctic warming at different timescales are revealed with idealized numerical simulations.Induced by local forcing and feedback,Arctic warming appears and leads to sea-ice melting.Deep-water formation is inhibited,which weakens the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation(AMOC).The flow and temperature in the upper layer does not respond to the AMOC decrease immediately,especially at mid-low latitudes.Thus,nearly uniform surface warming in mid-low latitudes enhances(decreases)the strength(width)of the Hadley cell(HC).With the smaller northward heat carried by the weaker AMOC,the Norwegian Sea cools significantly.With strong warming in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes,the long-term response triggers the“temperature-wind-gyre-temperature”cycle,leading to colder midlatitudes,resulting in strong subsidence and Ferrel cell enhancement,which drives the HC southward.With weaker warming in the tropics and stronger warming at high latitudes,there is a stronger HC with decreased width.A much warmer Southern Hemisphere appears due to a weaker AMOC that also pushes the HC southward.Our idealized model results suggest that the HC strengthens under both warming conditions,as tropical warming determines the strength of the HC convection.Second,extreme Arctic warming led by artificially reduced surface albedo decreases the meridional temperature gradient between high and low latitudes,which contracts the HC.Third,a warmer mid-high latitude in the Northern(Southern)Hemisphere due to surface albedo feedback(weakened AMOC)in our experiments pushes the HC northward(southward).In most seasons,the HC exhibits the same trend as that described above.

Sensitivity study of the wave-driven current in an Arctic frazil-pancake ice zone

A coupled ocean-ice-wave model is used to study ice-edge jet and eddy genesis during surface gravity wave dissipation in a frazil-pancake ice zone. With observational data from the Beaufort Sea, possible wave dissipation processes are evaluated using sensitivity experiments. As wave energy dissipated, energy was transferred into ice floe through radiation stress. Later, energy was in turn transferred into current through ocean-ice interfacial stress. Since most of the wave energy is dissipated at the ice edge, ice-edge jets, which contained strong horizontal shear, appeared both in the ice zone and the ocean. Meanwhile, the wave propagation direction determines the velocity partition in the along-ice-edge and cross-ice-edge directions, which in turn determines the strength of the along-ice-edge jet and cross-ice-edge velocity. The momentum applied in the along-ice-edge(cross-ice-edge)direction increased(decreased) with larger incident angle, which is favorable condition for producing stronger mesoscale eddies, vice versa. The dissipation rate increases(decreases) with larger(smaller) wavenumber, which enhances(reduces) the jet strength and the strength of the mesoscale eddy. The strong along-ice-edge jet may extend to a deep layer(> 200 m). If the water depth is too shallow(e.g., 80 m), the jet may be largely dampened by bottom drag, and no visible mesoscale eddies are found. The results suggest that the bathymetry and incident wavenumber(magnitude and propagation direction) are important for wave-driven current and mesoscale eddy genesis.

Demonstration of the refined three-dimensional structure of mesoscale eddies and computational error estimates via Lagrangian analysis

In previous studies,Lagrangian analyses were used to assess large-scale ocean circulation,and the Lagrangian coherent structure could also reveal the evolution of the two-dimensional structure of the mesoscale eddies.However,few studies have demonstrated the three-dimensional structure of the mesoscale eddies via Lagrangian analysis.Compared with previous studies,which investigated the eddy structure via a Eulerian view,we used a Lagrangian view to provide a different perspective to study the eddy structure.An idealized cyclonic mesoscale eddy is built up over a seamount,and it presents downwelling inside the eddy and upwelling alongside the eddy formed within a closed circulation system.This structure is difficult to display via a Eulerian analysis.However,the trajectories of particles can well demonstrate the full cycle:the fluid sank and rotated inside the eddies,converged to the upwelling zone of the bottom layer and returned to the surface through upwelling.We also applied a Lagrangian analysis to a realistic simulation.As a significant phenomenon in the South China Sea,the dipole structure of the anticyclonic eddy(AE)/cyclonic eddy(CE)pair off of central Vietnam has been well studied but mainly at the sea surface.With a Lagrangian analysis,we illustrate the three-dimensional structure of the eddy pair:the fluid sank(rose)and rotated inside the AE(CE).More importantly,the trajectories of the particles suggested that there was no fluid exchange between the two eddies since the strong boundary jet separates them from each other.All the conclusions above have been verified and are supported by the computational error estimate.With a selected time step and integral period,the computational errors always present small values,although they increase with strong divergent and vertical diffusive flow.

Assimilation of HY-2A Scatterometer Ambiguous Winds Based on Feature Thinning

This paper focuses on the data assimilation methods for sea surface winds, based on the level-2B HY-2A satellite microwave scatterometer wind products. We propose a new feature thinning method, which is herein used to screen scatterometer winds while maintaining the key structure of the wind field in the process of data thinning for highresolution satellite observations. We also accomplish feeding the ambiguous wind solutions directly into the data assimilation system, thus making better use of the retrieved information while simplifying the assimilation process of the scatterometer products. A numerical simulation experiment involving Typhoon Danas shows that our method gives better results than the traditional approach. This method may be a valuable alternative for operational satellite data assimilation.