Collaborative Research: The Interaction of Anticyclonic Eddies with Deep Convection

越来越多的观测证据现在指出，强烈的、通常是长期存在的非气旋性涡旋是世界海洋深层对流区突出的动力特征之一。然而，基于过去较为有限的观测资料，建模研究倾向于关注恰恰相反的情况，即气旋涡旋在受到强烈地表冷却时迅速解体。反气旋涡旋可以以多种方式与深层对流相互作用，但它们对对流水团转化的净影响远不明显。因此，它们的影响必须被视为全球温盐环流中一个重要的尚未解决的因素，进而被视为一个引起重大社会关注的研究问题。提出了采用模拟和数据分析相结合的方法来研究反气旋涡旋和对流之间的相互作用。反气旋涡流在强表面浮力损失下的详细行为将在广泛的参数空间范围内进行研究。借助新开发的数学和统计技术，我们将使用各种高质量的数据集系统地识别和描述几个关键对流区域的相干涡流。最终结果应该是朝着在现实环境中更全面地理解深层对流迈出的重要一步。这项面向过程的工作将使大尺度模式对流的参数化得到改进，从而更准确地预测气候变率。

An increasing amount of observational evidence now points to intense, often long-lived, aticyclonic eddies as one of the outstanding dynamical features in the deeply convecting regions of the world ocean. Yet modeling studies, informed by the more limited observations available in the past, have tended to focus on precisely the opposite case, cyclonic eddies that rapidly disintegrate when subjected to strong surface cooling. Anticyclonic eddies could interact with deep convection in a variety of ways, but their net effect on convective water mass transformation is far from obvious. Their influence must therefore be considered an important unresolved element of the global thermohaline circulation, and by extension, a research problem of substantial societal concern. It is proposed to investigate the interaction between anticyclonic eddies and convection using a combined modeling and data analysis approach. The detailed behavior of anticyclonic eddies subject to strong surface buoyancy loss will be examined throughout a broad range of parameter space. With the aid of newly developed mathematical and statistical techniques, we will systematically identify and describe coherent eddies in several key convection areas using a variety of high-quality datasets. The net result should be a significant step towards a more complete understanding of deep convection in a realistic setting. This process-oriented work will make possible improved parameterizations of convection in large-scale models, and thus more accurate predictions of climate variability.