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Air-Sea Turbulent Heat Flux Feedback over Mesoscale Eddies
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  • Sophia M Moreton,
  • David Ferreira,
  • Malcolm J Roberts,
  • Helene Theresa Hewitt
Sophia M Moreton
University of Reading

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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David Ferreira
University of Reading
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Malcolm J Roberts
Met Office
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Helene Theresa Hewitt
Met Office
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Abstract

Air-sea turbulent heat fluxes play a fundamental role in generating and dampening sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. To date, the turbulent heat flux feedback (THFF) is well quantified at basin-wide scales (~20 W~m^{-2}~K^{-1}) but remains unknown at the oceanic mesoscale (10-100 km). Here, using an eddy-tracking algorithm in three configurations of the coupled climate model HadGEM3-GC3.1, the THFF over mesoscale eddies is estimated. The THFF magnitude is strongly dependent on the ocean-to-atmosphere regridding of SST, a common practice in coupled models for calculating air-sea heat flux. Our best estimate shows that the mesoscale THFF ranges between 35 and 45 W~m^{-2}~K^{-1} globally, across different eddy amplitudes. Increasing the ratio of atmosphere-to-ocean grid resolution can lead to an underestimation of the THFF, by as much as 75% for a 6:1 resolution ratio. Our results suggest that a large atmosphere-to-ocean grid ratio can result in an artificially weak dampening of mesoscale SST anomalies.
28 Oct 2021Published in Geophysical Research Letters volume 48 issue 20. 10.1029/2021GL095407