Fine-scale Air-sea Interactions Due to Oceanic Deep Jets
B. Taguchi1, R. Furue2, N. Komori1, A. Kuwano-Yoshida1,
M. Nonaka1, H. Sasaki1, and W. Ohfuchi1
1JAMSTEC, 2IPRC
Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, 2012
The finding of ubiquitous alternating east-west
zonal jets (or striations) in the oceans at the
surface and at depth by Maximenko (IPRC) et
al., and by Nakano & Hasumi (University of
Tokyo) less than a decade ago surprised
oceanographers. Now the impact of these
striations on the atmosphere has been
explored at fine scales (3–5° meridionally)
using CFES, a high-resolution, atmosphereocean coupled model developed at the
JAMSTEC Earth Simulator Center. Fine-scale,
quasi-barotropic zonal jets in the central south
Pacific (panel a) generate fine-scale seasurface temperature (SST) anomalies by zonal
advection. The atmospheric boundary layer
responds to these SST anomalies by
generating fine-scale wind stress curl, which
reinforces the original oceanic jets (panel b).
Latitude-time section of (a) depth-integrated zonal velocity of
the ocean and (b) the Sverdrup flow from wind curl, averaged
over 150–110°W.