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

基于全球海洋-大气耦合模拟的最新结果表明，在几天的时间尺度上，海表面温度(SST)和风速之间存在着普遍的协变性。由该团队领导的初步工作利用加州海流区的现场观测证实了这种振荡。这项研究涉及对现有的现场观测和模拟结果进行协同分析，以更好地了解全球海洋中各天时间尺度上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、水汽和气体的交换对地球系统的可预测性起着至关重要的作用。因此，更好地理解与海-气耦合有关的过程有可能促进我们对许多影响大、与社会有关的现象的理解，例如极端天气事件。这个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，这对于在数值模式中适当地将它们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风和海表面温度这两个基本气候变量之间相互作用的理解。这项研究将研究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气候至关重要，因为大气中95%的人为产生的热量通过混合层传递到海洋。该项目将支持皮比娅·维拉斯·博拉斯--一位女性、少数族裔、早期职业助理教授--努力建立她的研究项目，它还将支持一名将在科罗拉多矿业学院接受物理海洋学培训的博士生。维拉斯·博拉斯是Mines唯一的海洋学家，该机构历来专注于石油和天然气等地球资源。在Mines建立强大的物理海洋学对科罗拉多州和国家都有好处，因为这将使几乎没有接触环境科学的学生接触到海洋在气候中的作用。此外，国际海洋学协会及其小组致力于开放科学原则，并积极参与扩大参与和增加获取海洋学和海洋数据的机会的努力。这个项目的结果将发表在开放获取的期刊上，数据代码将与教学用的Jupyter笔记本一起公开，以实现结果的无缝重复性。WIND和SST之间的这种协变性表现为负相关和正相关之间的振荡，具有3-6天的周期性。是什么物理过程驱动了这种振荡，是什么设定了它的时间尺度，目前尚不清楚。特别是，这项研究将测试这样的假设，即这种协同振荡是对海气过渡带表面热通量、风力驱动的混合、Ekman抽水和其他过程的综合反应的结果；因此，这些风-SST反馈的特征持续时间和强度将因季节和地理位置而异。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.