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1. Maintenance of mid-latitude oceanic fronts by mesoscale eddies

   https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aba7880  

   Jing, Zhao ; Wang, Shengpeng ; Wu, Lixin ; Chang, Ping ; Zhang, Qiuying ; Sun, Bingrong ; Ma, Xiaohui ; Qiu, Bo ; Small, Justing ; Jin, Fei-Fei ; et al ( July 2020 , Science Advances)

   null (Ed.)

   Oceanic fronts associated with strong western boundary current extensions vent a vast amount of heat into the atmosphere, anchoring mid-latitude storm tracks and facilitating ocean carbon sequestration. However, it remains unclear how the surface heat reservoir is replenished by ocean processes to sustain the atmospheric heat uptake. Using high-resolution climate simulations, we find that the vertical heat transport by ocean mesoscale eddies acts as an important heat supplier to the surface ocean in frontal regions. This vertical eddy heat transport is not accounted for by the prevailing inviscid and adiabatic ocean dynamical theories such as baroclinic instability and frontogenesis but is tightly related to the atmospheric forcing. Strong surface cooling associated with intense winds in winter promotes turbulent mixing in the mixed layer, destructing the vertical shear of mesoscale eddies. The restoring of vertical shear induces an ageostrophic secondary circulation transporting heat from the subsurface to surface ocean. 

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2. Imprint of Chaos on the Ocean Energy Cycle from an Eddying North Atlantic Ensemble

   https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-23-0176.1  

   Uchida, Takaya ; Jamet, Quentin ; Dewar, William_K ; Deremble, Bruno ; Poje, Andrew_C ; Sun, Luolin ( March 2024 , Journal of Physical Oceanography)

   We examine the ocean energy cycle where the eddies are defined about the ensemble mean of a partially air–sea coupled, eddy-rich ensemble simulation of the North Atlantic. The decomposition about the ensemble mean leads to a parameter-free definition of eddies, which is interpreted as the expression of oceanic chaos. Using the ensemble framework, we define the reservoirs of mean and eddy kinetic energy (MKE and EKE, respectively) and mean total dynamic enthalpy (MTDE). We opt for the usage of dynamic enthalpy (DE) as a proxy for potential energy due to its dynamically consistent relation to hydrostatic pressure in Boussinesq fluids and nonreliance on any reference stratification. The curious result that emerges is that the potential energy reservoir cannot be decomposed into its mean and eddy components, and the eddy flux of DE can be absorbed into the EKE budget as pressure work. We find from the energy cycle that while baroclinic instability, associated with a positive vertical eddy buoyancy flux, tends to peak around February, EKE takes its maximum around September in the wind-driven gyre. Interestingly, the energy input from MKE to EKE, a process sometimes associated with barotropic processes, becomes larger than the vertical eddy buoyancy flux during the summer and autumn. Our results question the common notion that the inverse energy cascade of wintertime EKE energized by baroclinic instability within the mixed layer is solely responsible for the summer-to-autumn peak in EKE and suggest that both the eddy transport of DE and transfer of energy from MKE to EKE contribute to the seasonal EKE maxima.

   The Earth system, including the ocean, is chaotic. Namely, the state to be realized is highly sensitive to minute perturbations, a phenomenon commonly known as the “butterfly effect.” Here, we run a sweep of ocean simulations that allow us to disentangle the oceanic expression of chaos from the oceanic response to the atmosphere. We investigate the energy pathways between the two in a physically consistent manner in the North Atlantic region. Our approach can be extended to robustly examine the temporal change of oceanic energy and heat distribution under a warming climate.

    

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3. Vertical Structure of Ocean Mesoscale Eddies with Implications for Parameterizations of Tracer Transport

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2020MS002151  

   Stanley, Z. ; Bachman, S. D. ; Grooms, I. ( October 2020 , Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems)

   The Gent–McWilliams parameterization is commonly used in global ocean models to model the advective component of tracer transport effected by unresolved mesoscale eddies. The vertical structure of the transfer coefficient in this parameterization is studied using data from a 0.1° resolution global ocean‐ice simulation. The vertical structure is found to be well approximated by a baroclinic mode structure with no flow at the bottom, though horizontal anisotropy is crucial for obtaining a good fit. This vertical structure is motivated by reference to the vertical structure of mesoscale eddy velocity and density anomalies, which are also diagnosed from the data.

    

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4. Modulation of Phytoplankton Uptake by Mesoscale and Submesoscale Eddies in the California Current System

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL104853  

   Damien, Pierre ; Bianchi, Daniele ; Kessouri, Fayçal ; McWilliams, James_C ( August 2023 , Geophysical Research Letters)

   Eddies play a crucial role in shaping ocean dynamics by affecting material transport, and generating spatio‐temporal heterogeneity. However, how eddies at different scales modulate biogeochemical transformation rates remains an open question. Applying a multi‐scale decomposition to a numerical simulation, we investigate the respective impact of mesoscale and submesoscale eddies on nutrient transport and biogeochemical cycling in the California Current System. First, the non‐linear nature of nutrient uptake by phytoplankton results in a 50% reduction in primary production in the presence of eddies. Second, eddies shape the vertical transport of nutrients with a strong compensation between mesoscale and submesoscale. Third, the eddy effect on nutrient uptake is controlled by the covariance of temperature, nutrient and phytoplankton fluctuations caused by eddies. Our results shed new light on the tight interaction between non‐linear fluid dynamics and ecosystem processes in realistic eddy regimes, which remain largely under‐resolved by global Earth system models.

    

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5. Inferring Tracer Diffusivity From Coherent Mesoscale Eddies

   https://doi.org/10.1029/2023MS004004  

   Zhang, Wenda ; Wolfe, Christopher L. P. ( April 2024 , Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems)

   Mixing along isopycnals plays an important role in the transport and uptake of oceanic tracers. Isopycnal mixing is commonly quantified by a tracer diffusivity. Previous studies have estimated the tracer diffusivity using the rate of dispersion of surface drifters, subsurface floats, or numerical particles advected by satellite‐derived velocity fields. This study shows that the diffusivity can be more efficiently estimated from the dispersion of coherent mesoscale eddies. Coherent eddies are identified and tracked as the persistent sea surface height extrema in both a two‐layer quasigeostrophic (QG) model and an idealized primitive equation (PE) model. The Lagrangian diffusivity is estimated using the tracks of these coherent eddies and compared to the diagnosed Eulerian diffusivity. It is found that the meridional coherent eddy diffusivity approaches a stable value within about 20–40 days in both models. In the QG model, the coherent eddy diffusivity is a good approximation to the upper‐layer tracer diffusivity in a broad range of flow regimes, except for small values of bottom friction or planetary vorticity gradient, where the motions of same‐sign eddies are correlated over long distances. In the PE model, the tracer diffusivity has a complicated vertical structure and the coherent eddy diffusivity is correlated with the tracer diffusivity at the e‐folding depth of the energy‐containing eddies where the intrinsic speed of the coherent eddies matches the rms eddy velocity. These results suggest that the oceanic tracer diffusivity at depth can be estimated from the movements of coherent mesoscale eddies, which are routinely tracked from satellite observations.

    

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