Interannual Variability of Winter Sea Levels Induced by Local Wind Stress in the Northeast Asian Marginal Seas: 1993–2017
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The interannual variability of winter sea levels averaged over the northeast Asian marginal seas, consisting of the Yellow Sea, East China Sea, and the East Sea (ES), was investigated. The spatial-mean sea level in winter observed using satellite altimetry shows significant interannual variations with a long-term rising trend of 3.88 mm y−1 during 1993–2017, with relatively high (Period H) and low (Period L) sea level anomalies. These anomalies correlate with the patterns of the East Asian winter monsoon at interannual timescales. The atmospheric pressure difference between the Sea of Okhotsk (SO) and ES around the Soya Strait is large during Period H. Ekman transport increases due to enhanced southeastward wind stress and results in a horizontal mass convergence that yields positive sea level anomalies during Period H. In contrast, the wind-induced transport is enhanced in the southern ES rather than in the southern SO resulting in horizontal mass divergence and negative anomalies in the spatial-mean winter sea level during Period L. Our results highlight the important roles of local wind forcing and Ekman dynamics in inducing interannual winter sea level variability in the region indicating the high predictive ability of atmospheric pressure anomalies around the Soya Strait.Keywords:
Ekman transport
Wind Stress
Analysis of sea surface temperature (SST) from coastal buoys suggests that the summertime over‐shelf water temperature off the U.S. West Coast has been declining during the past 30 years at an average rate of −0.19°C decade −1 . This cooling trend manifests itself more strongly off south‐central California than off Oregon and northern California. The variability and trend in the upwelling north of off San Francisco are positively correlated with those of the equatorward wind, indicating a role of offshore Ekman transport in the north. In contrast, Ekman pumping associated with wind stress curls better explains the stronger and statistically more significant cooling trend in the south. While the coast‐wide variability and trend in SST are strongly correlated with those of large‐scale modes of climate variability, they in general fail to explain the southward intensification of the trend in SST and wind stress curl. This result suggests that the local wind stress curl, often topographically forced, may have played a role in the upwelling trend pattern.
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The Eastern Tropical and Subtropical Pacific, particularly the coastal region of the western South America, is affected by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event.In this work ERS-1 and ERS-2 scatterometer data of wind stress climatology are used to study Ekman pumping/suction and transport in the coastal ocean at 15°S off San Juan, Peru.The Princeton Ocean Model (POM) was run to study oceanic circulation and Ekman dynamics along the Peruvian coast when La Niña (1996-1997) and El Niño (1997-1998) events occur.The model is forced by the wind stress and I use the temperature and salinity are taken from levitus climatology The analysis confirm that when strong El Niño events occur, the meridional wind stress has a dominant role in the intensity of coastal upwelling, the speed of Ekman pumping was nearly six (6) times larger than the normal speed of Ekman suction and offshore Ekman transport nearly doubled.
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Ekman layer
Ocean dynamics
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Orography
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Coastal upwelling is commonly explained on the basis of Ekman's [1905] theory. At some distance from the coast, where the effects of the coastal boundary are negligible, the Ekman transport of surface water normal to the coast is given by ((1))where Tn is mass transport through unit width vertical surface parallel to the coastline, τp is the component of the wind stress parallel to the coastline, and ƒ is the Coriolis parameter. The transport is directed 90° to the right of the wind in the northern hemisphere. Along the coast of northern California, Oregon, and Washington, which runs approximately north-south, northerly winds transport the surface water offshore, necessitating replacement inshore by upwelling.
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Abstract. Two physical mechanisms can contribute to coastal upwelling in eastern boundary current systems: offshore Ekman transport due to the predominant alongshore wind stress and Ekman pumping due to the cyclonic wind stress curl, mainly caused by the abrupt decrease in wind stress (drop-off) in a cross-shore band of 100 km. This wind drop-off is thought to be an ubiquitous feature in coastal upwelling systems and to regulate the relative contribution of both mechanisms. It has been poorly studied along the central-northern Chile region because of the lack in wind measurements along the shoreline and of the relatively low resolution of the available atmospheric reanalysis. Here, the seasonal variability in Ekman transport, Ekman pumping and their relative contribution to total upwelling along the central-northern Chile region (∼ 30° S) is evaluated from a high-resolution atmospheric model simulation. As a first step, the simulation is validated from satellite observations, which indicates a realistic representation of the spatial and temporal variability of the wind along the coast by the model. The model outputs are then used to document the fine-scale structures in the wind stress and wind curl in relation to the topographic features along the coast (headlands and embayments). Both wind stress and wind curl had a clear seasonal variability with annual and semiannual components. Alongshore wind stress maximum peak occurred in spring, second increase was in fall and minimum in winter. When a threshold of −3 × 10−5 s−1 for the across-shore gradient of alongshore wind was considered to define the region from which the winds decrease toward the coast, the wind drop-off length scale varied between 8 and 45 km. The relative contribution of the coastal divergence and Ekman pumping to the vertical transport along the coast, considering the estimated wind drop-off length, indicated meridional alternation between both mechanisms, modulated by orography and the intricate coastline. Roughly, coastal divergence predominated in areas with low orography and headlands. Ekman pumping was higher in regions with high orography and the presence of embayments along the coast. In the study region, the vertical transport induced by coastal divergence and Ekman pumping represented 60 and 40 % of the total upwelling transport, respectively. The potential role of Ekman pumping on the spatial structure of sea surface temperature is also discussed.
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Global wind patterns
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A reduced-gravity, primitive equation, upper-ocean GCM is used to study subduction pathways in the Atlantic subtropical and tropical gyres. In order to compare the different responses in the pathways to strong and weak wind stress forcings, Hellerman and Rosenstein (HR) and da Silva (DSV) climatological annual-mean and monthly wind stress forcings are used to force the model. It is shown that subtropical–tropical communication is dependent on both the strength and structure of the wind forcing. A comparison between the two experiments shows two results for the North Atlantic: 1) the full communication window between the subtropical and tropical gyres is similar in width despite the difference in the intensity of the winds and 2) the interior exchange window width is substantially larger in the weak forcing experiment (DSV) than the strong forcing experiment (HR), accompanied by a larger transport as well. The South Atlantic exhibits a similar communication between the subtropics and Tropics in both cases. The annual-mean of the seasonally varying forcing also supports these results. A two-layer ventilated thermocline model is developed with a zonally varying, even though idealized, wind stress in the North Atlantic, which includes the upward Ekman pumping region absent from the classical ventilated thermocline model. The model shows that the communication window for subduction pathways is a function of the zonal gradient of the Ekman pumping velocity, not the Ekman pumping itself, at outcrop lines and at the boundary between the subtropical and tropical gyres. This solution is validated using three additional GCM experiments. It is shown that the communication windows are primarily explained by the ventilated thermocline model without considering the buoyancy effects. From the GCM experiments, the interior exchange window, which is a part of the communication window and cannot be explained by the ventilated thermocline model, is widened by two factors: 1) eliminating part of the positive Ekman pumping region in the eastern North Atlantic and 2) weakening the Ekman pumping over the whole region. The implications of these results suggest that changes in the wind forcing on the order of the difference in the wind products used here can have a significant effect on the attributes of the communication window and, hence, the thermocline structure at lower latitudes.
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Forcing (mathematics)
Tropical Atlantic
Subtropical front
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Boundary current
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Downwelling
Ocean dynamics
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We analyze the results of a regional model of the Southern Benguela upwelling system forced by wind stress fields derived from QuikSCAT observations. Two different horizontal resolutions are considered for the wind stress: QS25 and QS50, corresponding to native 25 and 50 km grids, respectively. The differences between both products highlight the primary importance of fine-scale momentum fluxes for both the structure and intensity of the wind- and wind-curl-driven upwelling. Using QS25, we show that the coastal Ekman transport is reduced, leading to a warmer SST and a reduced oceanic coastal jet. QS25 finer wind stress curl patterns also favor the development of a stronger and shallower poleward undercurrent. The addition of a coastal wind correction to QS25 lets us investigate the possible implications of an imbalance between Ekman transport and Ekman pumping: a wind reduction in the coastal band often reduces the SST cooling, but the two mechanisms compensate each other when the characteristic length scales of the coastal upwelling and the orography-induced wind drop-off are similar.
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Orography
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