Interactions between winds and sea surface temperature at timescales of several days

最近的全球海气耦合模式的基础上的结果表明，海表温度（SST）和风速在几天的时间尺度上的普遍存在的协变。由该小组领导的初步工作已经在加州海流区使用现场观测证实了这种振荡。这项研究涉及对现有现场观测和建模输出的协同分析，以更好地了解全球海洋中以天为时间尺度的风和海面温度之间的共同振荡的性质。海气过渡带的热量、动量、水分和气体交换在地球系统的可预报性中起着关键作用。因此，加深对海气耦合过程的理解，有可能促进我们对极端天气事件等许多影响大、与社会有关的现象的理解。该项目将进一步加深我们对控制海气交换的基本过程的理解，这对于在数值模型中适当地对其进行参数化以及改进天气预报和气候预测至关重要。特别是，这项研究将加深我们对两个基本气候变量之间相互作用的理解，即，风和海面温度。本研究将探讨这两个变量的共同振荡如何影响和响应海洋混合层中的过程。这一层的动态对地球的气候至关重要，因为大气中95%的热量是通过混合层传递到海洋的。该项目将支持PI Bia Villas Bôas-一位女性，代表性不足的少数民族，早期职业助理教授-努力建立她的研究计划，它还将支持一名博士生，他将在科罗拉多矿业学院接受物理海洋学培训。Villas Bôas是Mines唯一的海洋学家，Mines是一个历史上专注于石油和天然气等地球资源的机构。在矿山物理海洋学中建立强大的存在有利于科罗拉多州和全国，因为它将使那些与环境科学接触很少的学生了解海洋在气候中的作用。此外，PI和她的小组致力于开放科学原则，并积极参与扩大参与和增加海洋学和海洋学数据的可访问性的努力。该项目的结果将发表在开放获取期刊上，数据代码将与教学用的气象笔记本示例一起公开沿着，以实现结果的无缝再现。风和SST之间的这种协变表现为负相关和正相关之间的振荡，具有3-6天周期的周期性质。是什么物理过程驱动了这种振荡，以及是什么决定了它的时间尺度仍然是未知的。特别是，这项研究将检验这样一种假设，即这种共同振荡是对表面热通量、风驱动的混合、埃克曼抽吸和海气过渡区的其他过程的综合反应的结果;因此，在本发明中，这些风的特征持续时间和强度SST反馈将根据季节和地理位置而变化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过评估被认为值得支持使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Recent results based on global coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling suggest a ubiquitous covariability between sea surface temperature (SST) and wind speed at timescales of several days. Preliminary work led by this team has confirmed such oscillation using in-situ observations in the California Current Region. This research involves the synergistic analysis of existing in-situ observations and modeling output to better understand the nature of the co-oscillation between winds and sea surface temperature at timescales of days in the global oceans. The exchange of heat, momentum, moisture, and gases across the air-sea transition zone plays critical roles in the Earth system predictability. Thus, an improved understanding of processes relevant to air-sea coupling has the potential to advance our understanding of many high-impact, societal-relevant phenomena, such as extreme weather events. This project will further our understanding of fundamental processes that control air-sea exchanges, essential to properly parametrizing them in numerical models and improving weather forecasting and climate projections. In particular, the research will deepen our understanding of interactions between two essential climate variables, i.e., wind and sea surface temperature. This study will investigate how the co-oscillation of these two variables impacts and responds to processes in the ocean mixed layer. The dynamics in this layer are fundamentally important for the Earth’s climate, as 95% of the anthropogenically created heat in the atmosphere is communicated to the ocean through the mixed layer. This project will support PI Bia Villas Bôas—a female, underrepresented minority, early career Assistant Professor—in her efforts to build her research program, and it will also support a Ph.D student who will be trained in physical oceanography at Colorado School of Mines. Villas Bôas is the only oceanographer at Mines, an institution that has historically focused on Earth resources, such as oil and gas. Establishing a strong presence in physical oceanography at Mines benefits the State of Colorado and the country because it will expose students that had little contact with environmental sciences to the role of the oceans in climate. Additionally, the PI and her group are committed to Open Science principles and are actively engaged in efforts to broaden participation and increase accessibility to oceanography and oceanographic data. The results from this project will be published in open access journals, and the data code will be made publicly available along with pedagogical Jupyter Notebooks examples for seamless reproducibility of the results.This covariability between wind and SST manifests itself in correlations as an oscillation between negative and positive correlation with a cyclic nature with a 3-6 day period. What physical processes drive this oscillation and what sets its time scale remains unknown. In particular, the study will test the hypothesis that this co-oscillation results from a combined response to surface heat fluxes, wind-driven mixing, Ekman pumping, and other processes at the air-sea transition zone; thus, the characteristic duration and strength of these wind-SST feedbacks will vary based on season and geographic location.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.