Changes in ocean heat content caused by wave-induced mixing in a high-resolution ocean model

L Stoney; KJE Walsh; S Thomas; P Spence; AV Babanin

Journal article

Changes in ocean heat content caused by wave-induced mixing in a high-resolution ocean model

L Stoney, KJE Walsh, S Thomas, P Spence, AV Babanin

Journal of Physical Oceanography | AMER METEOROLOGICAL SOC | Published : 2018

DOI: 10.1175/JPO-D-17-0142.1

Abstract

A parameterization of turbulent mixing from unbroken surface waves is included in a 16-yr simulation within a high-resolution ocean circulation model (MOM5). This "surface wave mixing" (SWM) derives from the wave orbital motion and is parameterized as an additional term in a k-epsilon model. We show that SWM leads to significant changes in sea surface temperatures but smaller changes in ocean heat content, and show the extent to which these changes can reduce pre-existing model biases with respect to observed data. Specifically, SWM leads to a widespread improvement in sea surface temperature in both hemispheres in summer and winter, while for ocean heat content the improvements are less cle..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Kevin Walsh Author

Alexander Babanin Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

The authors thank Nick Hannah and the Consortium of Ocean Sea Ice Modelling in Australia (cosima.org.au) for providing data from their coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice model. This research was undertaken with the assistance of resources from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government. The authors would particularly like to thank Aiden Heerdegen and Marshall Ward of NCI for their assistance. This work was partially funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Projects Grant DP 130100227. AVB also acknowledges ARC Discovery Grant DP 170101328 and DISI Australia-China Centre through Grant ACSRF48199. Paul Spence is supported by an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship DE150100223. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Stefan Zieger and Ian Young. All data produced during this work, including the files necessary to reproduce the result, can be obtained on request (kevin.walsh@unimelb.edu.au).