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

最近基于全球耦合海洋-大气模式的结果表明，在数天的时间尺度上，海表温度（SST）和风速之间普遍存在协变。这个小组领导的初步工作已经通过在加利福尼亚洋流区域的原位观测证实了这种振荡。这项研究包括对现有的原位观测和模拟输出进行协同分析，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共振荡的性质。热、动量、水分和气体在海气过渡带的交换在地球系统的可预测性中起着关键作用。因此，对海气耦合相关过程的更好理解有可能促进我们对许多高影响、与社会相关的现象的理解，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参数化海气交换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（即风和海面温度）之间相互作用的理解。本研究将探讨这两个变量的共振荡如何影响和响应海洋混合层的过程。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给海洋。该项目将支持PI Bia Villas Bôas-a女性，未被充分代表的少数民族，早期职业生涯助理教授，在她努力建立她的研究项目的同时，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。Villas Bôas是Mines唯一的海洋学家，该机构历来专注于地球资源，如石油和天然气。在Mines建立一个强大的物理海洋学存在有利于科罗拉多州和国家，因为它将使很少接触环境科学的学生了解海洋在气候中的作用。此外，PI和她的团队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及性的努力。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Jupyter notebook示例一起公开，以实现结果的无缝再现。风和海温的协变性表现为负相关和正相关之间的振荡，周期为3 ~ 6天。是什么物理过程驱动了这种振荡，是什么决定了它的时间尺度，这些都还不得而知。特别是，该研究将验证这样一个假设，即这种共振荡是由海气过渡区表面热通量、风驱动混合、Ekman泵送和其他过程的综合响应引起的；因此，这些风-海温反馈的特征持续时间和强度将根据季节和地理位置而变化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.