HR: 14:55h
AN: OS13D-06    [Abstracts]
TI: Eddy Heat Fluxes in the Subtropical North Pacific from Argo, TMI and Altimetry Measurements
AU: * Qiu, B
EM: bo@soest.hawaii.edu
AF: University of Hawaii Dept of Oceanography, 1000 Pope Rd, Honolulu, HI 96822 United States
AU: Chen, S
EM: schen@soest.hawaii.edu
AF: University of Hawaii Dept of Oceanography, 1000 Pope Rd, Honolulu, HI 96822 United States
AB: Basin-scale heat transport induced by mesoscale oceanic eddies is estimated by combining satellite-derived sea surface height and temperature data with Argo float temperature/salinity data. In the North Pacific subtropical gyre, warm (cold) temperature anomalies of mesoscale eddies are found to be consistently located to the west of high (low) SSH anomalies. The phase misalignment between the temperature and velocity anomalies, however, is largely confined to the seasonal thermocline, causing most of the eddy-induced heat transport to be carried in the surface 200\,m layer. By establishing a statistical relationship between the surface and depth-integrated values of the eddy heat transport, the basin-scale eddy heat transport is derived from the concurrent satellite SSH/SST data of the past 6 yrs. In the Kuroshio Extension region, the meandering zonal jet is found to generate oppositely signed eddy heat fluxes. As a result, the zonally integrated poleward heat transport associated with the Kuroshio Extension is at a level of $O(0.1$\,pW), smaller than the previous estimates based on turbulent closure schemes. Large poleward eddy heat transport is also found in the subtropical North Pacific along a SW-NE tilting band between Taiwan and the Midway Islands. This band corresponds to the region of the Subtropical Front and it is argued that the relevant temperature field for identifying this band in the turbulent closure scheme models should be that averaged over the seasonal thermocline.
UR: http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/bo/QC05$_-$inpress.pdf
DE: 4520 Eddies and mesoscale processes
DE: 4528 Fronts and jets
DE: 4568 Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes
DE: 4572 Upper ocean processes
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting