Cargando…

The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition

The Subpolar North Atlantic (SPNA) is one of the most important areas to global climate because its ocean heat content (OHC) is highly correlated with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and its circulation strength affects the salt transport by the AMOC, which in turn feeds and...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zhang, Weiwei, Yan, Xiao-Hai
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5653740/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29062083
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14158-6
_version_ 1783273265226055680
author Zhang, Weiwei
Yan, Xiao-Hai
author_facet Zhang, Weiwei
Yan, Xiao-Hai
author_sort Zhang, Weiwei
collection PubMed
description The Subpolar North Atlantic (SPNA) is one of the most important areas to global climate because its ocean heat content (OHC) is highly correlated with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and its circulation strength affects the salt transport by the AMOC, which in turn feeds and sustains the strength of the AMOC. Moreover, the recent global surface warming “hiatus” may be attributed to the SPNA as one of the major planetary heat sinks. Although almost synchronized before 1996, the OHC has greater spatial disparities afterwards, which cannot be explained as driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Temperature decomposition reveals that the western SPNA OHC is mainly determined by the along isopycnal changes, while in the eastern SPNA along isopycnal changes and isopycnal undulation are both important. Further analysis indicates that heat flux dominates the western SPNA OHC, but in the eastern SPNA wind forcing affects the OHC significantly. It is worth noting that the along isopycnal OHC changes can also induce heaving, thus the observed heaving domination in global oceans cannot mask the extra heat in the ocean during the recent “hiatus”.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-5653740
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2017
publisher Nature Publishing Group UK
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-56537402017-10-26 The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition Zhang, Weiwei Yan, Xiao-Hai Sci Rep Article The Subpolar North Atlantic (SPNA) is one of the most important areas to global climate because its ocean heat content (OHC) is highly correlated with the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and its circulation strength affects the salt transport by the AMOC, which in turn feeds and sustains the strength of the AMOC. Moreover, the recent global surface warming “hiatus” may be attributed to the SPNA as one of the major planetary heat sinks. Although almost synchronized before 1996, the OHC has greater spatial disparities afterwards, which cannot be explained as driven by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Temperature decomposition reveals that the western SPNA OHC is mainly determined by the along isopycnal changes, while in the eastern SPNA along isopycnal changes and isopycnal undulation are both important. Further analysis indicates that heat flux dominates the western SPNA OHC, but in the eastern SPNA wind forcing affects the OHC significantly. It is worth noting that the along isopycnal OHC changes can also induce heaving, thus the observed heaving domination in global oceans cannot mask the extra heat in the ocean during the recent “hiatus”. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC5653740/ /pubmed/29062083 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14158-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Zhang, Weiwei
Yan, Xiao-Hai
The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition
title The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition
title_full The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition
title_fullStr The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition
title_full_unstemmed The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition
title_short The Subpolar North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability and its Decomposition
title_sort subpolar north atlantic ocean heat content variability and its decomposition
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5653740/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29062083
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-14158-6
work_keys_str_mv AT zhangweiwei thesubpolarnorthatlanticoceanheatcontentvariabilityanditsdecomposition
AT yanxiaohai thesubpolarnorthatlanticoceanheatcontentvariabilityanditsdecomposition
AT zhangweiwei subpolarnorthatlanticoceanheatcontentvariabilityanditsdecomposition
AT yanxiaohai subpolarnorthatlanticoceanheatcontentvariabilityanditsdecomposition