The surface diurnal warm layer in the Indian Ocean during CINDY/DYNAMO

Matthews, Adrian ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0492-1168, Baranowski, Dariusz, Heywood, Karen ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9859-0026, Flatau, Piotr and Schmidtko, Sunke (2014) The surface diurnal warm layer in the Indian Ocean during CINDY/DYNAMO. Journal of Climate, 27 (24). 9101–9122. ISSN 0894-8755

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Abstract

A surface diurnal warm layer is diagnosed from Seaglider observations, and develops on half the days in the CINDY/DYNAMO Indian Ocean experiment. The diurnal warm layer occurs on days of high solar radiation flux (>80 W m-2) and low wind speed (<6 m s-1), and preferentially in the inactive stage of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Its diurnal harmonic has an exponential vertical structure with a depth scale of 4-5 m (dependent on chlorophyll concentration), consistent with forcing by absorption of solar radiation. The effective sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly due to the diurnal warm layer often reaches 0.8°C in the afternoon, with a daily mean of 0.2°C, rectifying the diurnal cycle onto longer time scales. This SST anomaly drives an anomalous flux of 4 W m-2 that cools the ocean. Alternatively, in a climate model where this process is unresolved, this represents an erroneous flux that warms the ocean. A simple model predicts a diurnal warm layer to occur on 30-50% of days across the tropical warm pool. On the remaining days, with low solar radiation and high wind speeds, a residual diurnal cycle is observed by the Seaglider, with a diurnal harmonic of temperature that decreases linearly with depth. As wind speed increases, this already weak temperature gradient decreases further, tending towards isothermal conditions.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Faculty of Science > School of Mathematics
Faculty of Science > School of Natural Sciences
University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Volcanoes@UEA (former - to 2018)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (former - to 2017)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Meteorology, Oceanography and Climate Dynamics (former - to 2017)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Climate, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences (former - to 2017)
Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 09 Oct 2014 15:38
Last Modified: 20 Mar 2023 08:31
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/50491
DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-14-00222.1

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