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Data and Code from: Buoyancy Forcing Dominates the Cross-Equatorial Ocean Heat Transport Response to Northern Hemisphere Extratropical Cooling

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Data and Code from: Buoyancy Forcing Dominates the Cross-Equatorial Ocean Heat Transport Response to Northern Hemisphere Extratropical Cooling

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Extent

2 digital objects.

Cite This Work

Luongo, Matthew T.; Xie, Shang-Ping; Eisenman, Ian (2022). Data and Code from: Buoyancy Forcing Dominates the Cross-Equatorial Ocean Heat Transport Response to Northern Hemisphere Extratropical Cooling. UC San Diego Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.6075/J0PR7W6B

Description

Fortran source code to developed to override wind stress in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) v. 1.2 and resulting GCM output data from Luongo et al. (2022).

Abstract of source study:

Cross-equatorial ocean heat transport (OHT) changes have been found to damp meridional shifts of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) induced by hemispheric asymmetries in radiative forcing. Zonal-mean energy transport theories and idealized model simulations have suggested that these OHT changes occur primarily due to wind-driven changes in the Indo-Pacific’s shallow subtropical cells (STCs) and buoyancy-driven changes in the deep Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). In this study we explore the partitioning between buoyancy and momentum forcing in the ocean’s response. We adjust the top-of-atmosphere solar forcing to cool the Northern Hemisphere (NH) extratropics in a novel set of comprehensive climate model simulations designed to isolate buoyancy-forced and momentum-forced changes. In this case of NH high latitude forcing, we confirm that buoyancy-driven changes in the AMOC dominate in the Atlantic. However, in contrast with prior expectations, buoyancy-driven changes in the STCs are the primary driver of the heat transport changes in the Indo-Pacific. We find that buoyancy-forced Indo-Pacific STC changes transport nearly four times the amount of heat across the equator as the shallower wind-driven STC changes. This buoyancy-forced STC response arises from extratropical density perturbations amplified by the low cloud feedback and communicated to the tropics by the ventilated thermocline. While the ocean’s specific response is dependent on forcing scheme, our results suggest that partitioning the ocean’s total response to energy perturbations into buoyancy and momentum forcing provides basin-specific insight into key aspects of how the ocean damps ITCZ migrations that previous zonal-mean frameworks omit.

Creation Date
  • 2021-05 to 2021-10
Date Issued
  • 2022
Principal Investigator
Advisors
Funding

NSF 2048590
NSF 1934392

Topics

Formats

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Language
  • English
Identifier

Identifier: Ian Eisenman: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0190-2869

Identifier: Matthew T. Luongo: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2996-7579

Identifier: Shang-Ping Xie: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3676-1325

Doi: https://doi.org/10.6075/J0PR7W6B

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