Recent studies highlight that oceanic motions associated with horizontal scales smaller than 50 km, defined here as submesoscales, lead to anomalous vertical heat fluxes from colder to warmer waters. This unique transport property is not captured in climate models that have insufficient resolution to simulate these submesoscale dynamics. Here, we use an ocean model with an unprecedented resolution that, for the first time, globally resolves submesoscale heat transport. Upper-ocean submesoscale turbulence produces a systematically-upward heat transport that is five times larger than mesoscale heat transport, with winter-time averages up to 100 W/m2 for mid-latitudes. Compared to a lower-resolution model, submesoscale heat transport warms the sea surface up to 0.3 °C and produces an upward annual-mean air–sea heat flux anomaly of 4–10 W/m2 at mid-latitudes. These results indicate that submesoscale dynamics are critical to the transport of heat between the ocean interior and the atmosphere, and are thus a key component of the Earth’s climate.

No abstract

The transition scale Lt from balanced geostrophic motions to unbalanced wave motions, including near-inertial flows, internal tides, and inertia–gravity wave continuum, is explored using the output from a global 1/48° horizontal resolution Massachusetts Institute of Technology general circulation model (MITgcm) simulation. Defined as the wavelength with equal balanced and unbalanced motion kinetic energy (KE) spectral density, Lt is detected to be geographically highly inhomogeneous: it falls below 40 km in the western boundary current and Antarctic Circumpolar Current regions, increases to 40–100 km in the interior subtropical and subpolar gyres, and exceeds, in general, 200 km in the tropical oceans. With the exception of the Pacific and Indian sectors of the Southern Ocean, the seasonal KE fluctuations of the surface balanced and unbalanced motions are out of phase because of the occurrence of mixed layer instability in winter and trapping of unbalanced motion KE in shallow mixed layer in summer. The combined effect of these seasonal changes renders Lt to be 20 km during winter in 80% of the Northern Hemisphere oceans between 25° and 45°N and all of the Southern Hemisphere oceans south of 25°S. The transition scale’s geographical and seasonal changes are highly relevant to the forthcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. To improve the detection of balanced submesoscale signals from SWOT, especially in the tropical oceans, efforts to remove stationary internal tidal signals are called for.

Upwelling of global deep waters to the sea surface in the Southern Ocean closes the global overturning circulation and is fundamentally important for oceanic uptake of carbon and heat, nutrient resupply for sustaining oceanic biological production, and the melt rate of ice shelves. However, the exact pathways and role of topography in Southern Ocean upwelling remain largely unknown. Here we show detailed upwelling pathways in three dimensions, using hydrographic observations and particle tracking in high-resolution models. The analysis reveals that the northern-sourced deep waters enter the Antarctic Circumpolar Current via southward flow along the boundaries of the three ocean basins, before spiraling southeastward and upward through the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Upwelling is greatly enhanced at five major topographic features, associated with vigorous mesoscale eddy activity. Deep water reaches the upper ocean predominantly south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, with a spatially nonuniform distribution. The timescale for half of the deep water to upwell from 30° S to the mixed layer is ~60–90 years.

Morrow et al. SWOT Fine-Scale Global Ocean Topography This presents both a challenge in reconstructing the 4D upper ocean circulation, or in the assimilation of SSH in models, but also an opportunity to have global observations of the 2D structure of these phenomena, and to learn more about their interactions. At these small scales, ocean dynamics evolve rapidly, and combining SWOT 2D SSH data with other satellite or in situ data with different space-time coverage is also a challenge. SWOT's new technology will be a forerunner for the future altimetric observing system, and so advancing on these issues today will pave the way for our future.