Seasonal variability of turbulent heat fluxes in the tropical Atlantic Ocean based on WHOI flux product

The mean seasonal variability of turbulent heat fluxes in the tropical Atlantic Ocean is examined using the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution （WHOI） flux product. The most turbulent heat fluxes occur during winter seasons in the two hemispheres, whose centers are located at 10° -20°N and 5° 15°S respectively. In climatological ITCZ, the turbulent heat fluxes are the greatest from June to August, and in equatorial cold tongue the turbulent heat fluxes are the greatest from March to May. Seasonal variability of sensible heat flux is smaller than that of latent heat flux and mainly is dominated by the variations of air-sea temperature difference. In the region with larger climatological mean wind speed （air-sea humidity difference）, the variations of air-sea humidity difference （wind speed） dominate the variability of latent heat flux. The characteristics of turbulent heat flux yielded from theory analysis and WHOI dataset is consistent in physics which turns out that WHOI＇ s flux data are pretty reliable in the tropical Atlantic Ocean.

Evaluation of monthly turbulent heat fluxes from WHOI analysis and NCEP reanalysis in the tropical Atlantic

The biases and their sources in monthly turbulent heat fluxes from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution （WHOI） analysis, and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction-National Center for Atmospheric Research reanalyses 1 and 2 （NCEPI and NCEP2） are checked in the climatically representative regions in the tropical Atlantic using the fluxes from the Southampton Oceanographic Centre （SOC） and the pilot research moored array in the tropical Atlantic （PIRATA） as references. For the WHOI analysis, the biases in turbulent heat fluxes mainly exist in equatorial regions which are due to the overestimated sea surface temperature and the underestimated 2 m air humidity. For the NCEP2 reanalysis, the maximum biases, about （40±5） W/m^2, exist in southeast and northeast trade wind regions, which are mainly caused by the flux algorithm used because the biases in wind speed and air-sea humidity difference are relatively small. In the equatorial regions, the flux biases in the NCEP2 derived from both flux-related basic variables and algorithm are equally large. Although the estimations of time series trends and air-sea humidity difference of the NCEPI are improved greatly in the NCEP2, the biases of latent heat flux in the NCEP2 are about 20 W/m^2 greater than those from the NCEP1 in the trade wind regions. The result shows that the climatologies and monthly variabilities of the turbulent heat fluxes from the WHOI are more accurate than those from the NCEP1 and NCEP2 in the tropical Atlantic, especially on outside of the equatorial regions.