Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) vary not only due to heat exchange across the air-sea interface but also due to changes in effective heat capacity as primarily determined by mixed layer depth (MLD). Here, we investigate seasonal and regional characteristics of the contribution of MLD anomalies to SST variability using observational datasets. We propose a metric called Flux Divergence Angle (FDA), which can quantify the relative contributions of surface heat fluxes and MLD anomalies to SST variability. Using this metric, we find that MLD anomalies tend to amplify SST anomalies in the extra-tropics, especially in the eastern ocean basins, during spring and summer. This amplification is explained by a positive feedback loop between SST and MLD via upper ocean stratification. In contrast, MLD anomalies tend to suppress SST anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific. The MLD contribution in the summer hemispheres is more pronounced on seasonal timescales than on sub-monthly timescales.

We examine the effects of the submesoscale in mediating the response to projected warming of phytoplankton new production and export using idealized biogeochemical tracers in a high-resolution regional model of the Porcupine Abyssal Plain region of the North Atlantic. We quantify submesoscale effects by comparing our control run to an integration in which submesoscale motions have been suppressed using increased viscosity. The warming climate over the 21st century reduces resolved submesoscale activity by a factor of 2-3. Annual new production is slightly reduced by submesoscale motions in a climate representative of the early 21st-century and slightly increased by submesoscale motions in a climate representative of the late 21st-century. Resolving the submesoscale, however, does not strongly impact the projected reduction in annual production under representative warming. Organic carbon export from the surface ocean includes both direct sinking of detritus (the biological gravitational pump) and advective transport mediated pathways; the sinking component is larger than advectively mediated transport by up to an order of magnitude across a wide range of imposed sinking rates. Submesoscales are responsible for most of the advective carbon export, however, which is thus largely reduced by a warming climate. In summary, our results demonstrate that resolving more of the submesoscale has a modest effect on present-day new production, a small effect on simulated reductions in new production under global warming, and a large effect on advectively-mediated export fluxes.

In this study we introduce a pair of idealized tracers to quantify how changes in physical advection and mixing under climate change affect the nutrient supply, new production, and particulate export rates. The low cost and simplicity of these tracers allows us to explore the sensitivity of the model biogeochemistry, and in particular its response to a changing physical environment, to the choice of model parameters. Using CESM2.1 with active ocean and ice only, at nominal one-degree resolution, under initial conditions and forcing representative of 2000 and 2100, our idealized nutrient and particulate are within the spread of nitrate and export from CMIP5 models. The simple form of the tracers allows us to identify the physical controls on the changing rates of supply, production, and export throughout the year, which together form the different seasonal cycles. We find that the ocean basins with the largest changes in the seasonal cycle over the 21st century are the North Atlantic, the Arctic, and the eastern tropical Pacific. We present results comparing the controls across basins, focusing on shifts in the timing of deepening mixed layers and maximum production rate in the northern North Atlantic through the Arctic, and changes in the spatial and temporal patterns of vertical advective exchange in the tropics and subtropics of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In both cases we discuss how much these changes depend on the biogeochemical model parameter values.

In this study we introduce a pair of idealized tracers to quantify how changes in physical advection and mixing under climate change affect the nutrient supply, new production, and particulate export rates. The low cost and simplicity of these tracers allows us to explore the sensitivity of the model biogeochemistry, and in particular its response to a changing physical environment, to the choice of model parameters. Using CESM2.1 with active ocean and ice only, at nominal one-degree resolution, under initial conditions and forcing representative of 2000 and 2100, our idealized nutrient and particulate are within the spread of nitrate and export from CMIP5 models. The simple form of the tracers allows us to identify the physical controls on the changing rates of supply, production, and export throughout the year, which together form the different seasonal cycles. We find that the ocean basins with the largest changes in the seasonal cycle over the 21st century are the North Atlantic, the Arctic, and the eastern tropical Pacific. We present results comparing the controls across basins, focusing on shifts in the timing of deepening mixed layers and maximum production rate in the northern North Atlantic through the Arctic, and changes in the spatial and temporal patterns of vertical advective exchange in the tropics and subtropics of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. In both cases we discuss how much these changes depend on the biogeochemical model parameter values.

Global warming may modify submesoscale activity in the ocean through changes in the mixed layer depth and lateral buoyancy gradients. As a case study we consider a region in the Northeast Atlantic under present and future climate conditions, using a time-slice method and global and nested regional ocean models. The high resolution regional model reproduces the strong seasonal cycle in submesoscale activity observed under present-day conditions. In the future, with a reduction in the mixed layer depth, there is a substantial reduction in submesoscale activity and an associated decrease in kinetic energy at the mesoscale. The vertical buoyancy flux induced by submesoscale activity is reduced by a factor of 2. When submesoscale activity is suppressed, by increasing the parameterized lateral mixing in the model, the climate change induces a larger reduction in winter mixed layer depths while there is less of a change in kinetic energy at the mesoscale. A scaling for the vertical buoyancy flux proposed by Fox-Kemper et.\ al.\, based on the properties of mixed layer instability (MLI), is found to capture much of the seasonal and future changes to the flux in terms of regional averages as well as the spatial structure, although it over predicts the reduction in the flux in the winter months. The vertical buoyancy flux when the mixed layer is relatively shallow is significantly greater than that given by the scaling based on MLI, suggesting during these times other processes (besides MLI) may dominate submesoscale buoyancy fluxes.

We formulate an expression for the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, $\epsilon$, associated with shear–generated turbulence in terms of readily measured properties of the flow or easily derived quantities in models. The expression depends on the turbulent vertical length scale, $\ell_v$, the inverse time scale $N$ and the Richardson number $Ri=N^2/S^2$, where $S$ is the vertical shear, with $\ell_v$ scaled in a way consistent with theories and observations of stratified turbulence. Unlike previous studies the focus is not so much on the functional form of $Ri$, but the vertical variation of the length scale $\ell_v$. Using data from two $\sim$7 day time series in the western equatorial Pacific the scaling is compared with the observed $\epsilon$. The scaling works well with the estimated $\epsilon$ capturing the differences in amplitude and vertical distribution of the observed $\epsilon$ between the two times series. Much of those differences are attributable to changes in the vertical distribution of the length scale $\ell_v$, and in particular the associated turbulent velocity scale, $u_t$. We relate $u_t$ to a measure of the fine-scale variations in velocity, $\tilde{u}$. Our study highlights the need to consider the length scale and its estimation in environmental flows. The implications for the vertical variation of the associated turbulent diffusivity are discussed.

Warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies have been observed in the subtropical North Pacific around Hawaii in the recent decade, appearing from 2013. We examined the formation mechanisms of the warm SST anomalies in terms of relative contribution of atmospheric surface forcing and oceanic dynamics, using the latest reanalysis products from ECMWF (ERA5 for atmosphere and ORAS5 for ocean). Results of the mixed layer temperature budget diagnosis in the target area (10-20˚N and 180˚-160˚W) indicates that contributions from anomalous latent heat fluxes to the subtropical SST anomalies are dominant. Oceanic advective contributions are relatively small, dampen the SST anomalies, and are negatively correlated (r = –0.38) with the latent heat fluxes. For example, the +1.0K SST increased from 2011 to 2015 results from +1.5K contributions from sum of surface heat flux and –0.5K from meridional oceanic advection. The anti-correlation between atmospheric forcing and oceanic meridional advection reflects co-variations of wind-driven latent heat flux and meridional Ekman advection due to the weakening of the zonal component of the surface winds.