A Monthly Index for the Large‐Scale Sea Surface Temperature Gradient Across the Separated Gulf Stream

Parfitt, R. L.; Kwon, Young‐Oh; Andres, Magdalena

doi:10.1029/2022gl100914

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…These general patterns may not be ubiquitous to all similar regions, and cannot yet be generalized. However, we speculate that larger chlorophyll variability tends to occur in the Lagrangian time series when drifter trajectories travel rapidly across strong spatial environmental gradients, in the core of topographically constrained western boundary currents, such as the Gulf Stream (e.g., Parfitt et al, 2022) and Brazil Current (e.g., Ffield, 2005). In contrast, regions where changes in phytoplankton biomass are strongly correlated with local nutrient supply, such as in upwelling zones (e.g., James et al, 2022), tend to show more variable chlorophyll in the Eulerian than Lagrangian perspective.…”

Section: In Which Regions Do the Eulerian And Lagrangian Perspectives...mentioning

confidence: 98%

A Global Comparison of Marine Chlorophyll Variability Observed in Eulerian and Lagrangian Perspectives

et al. 2023

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Ocean chlorophyll time series exhibit temporal variability on a range of timescales due to environmental change, ecological interactions, dispersal, and other factors. The differences in chlorophyll temporal variability observed at stationary locations (Eulerian perspective) or following water parcels (Lagrangian perspective) are poorly understood. Here we contrasted the temporal variability of ocean chlorophyll in these two observational perspectives, using global drifter trajectories and satellite chlorophyll to generate matched pairs of Eulerian‐Lagrangian time series. We found that for most ocean locations, chlorophyll variances measured in Eulerian and Lagrangian perspectives are not statistically different. In high latitude areas, the two perspectives may capture similar variability due to the large spatial scale of chlorophyll patches. In localized regions of the ocean, however, chlorophyll variability measured in these two perspectives may significantly differ. For example, in some western boundary currents, temporal chlorophyll variability in the Lagrangian perspective was greater than in the Eulerian perspective. In these cases, the observing platform travels rapidly across strong environmental gradients and constrained by the shelf topography, potentially leading to greater Lagrangian variability in chlorophyll. In contrast, we found that Eulerian chlorophyll variability exceeded Lagrangian variability in some key upwelling zones and boundary current extensions. In these cases, variability in the nutrient supply may generate intermittent chlorophyll anomalies in the Eulerian perspective, while the Lagrangian perspective sees the transport of such anomalies off‐shore. These findings aid with the interpretation of chlorophyll time series from different sampling methodologies, inform observational network design, and guide validation of marine ecosystem models.

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Section: In Which Regions Do the Eulerian And Lagrangian Perspectives...mentioning

confidence: 98%

A Global Comparison of Marine Chlorophyll Variability Observed in Eulerian and Lagrangian Perspectives

et al. 2023

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“…This instead suggests a possible role for the GS ∇SST FS itself in the ET process. Parfitt et al (2022) showed that on monthly timescales, ∇SST LS is atmospherically-driven in the unseparated GS region, but has little relationship to ∇SST FS on the same timescale (which along the GS front is not atmospherically-driven). In the next section, we investigate a potential mechanistic pathway for the influence of ∇SST FS on atmospheric fronts.…”

Section: Large-scale Atmospheric Setupmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gulf Stream Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Associated With the Extratropical Transition of North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones

Jones,

Parfitt,

Wing

et al. 2023

Geophysical Research Letters

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This study investigates Gulf Stream (GS) sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies associated with the extratropical transition (ET) of tropical cyclones (TCs) in the North Atlantic. Composites of western North Atlantic TCs indicate that GS SSTs are warmer, and both large‐ and fine‐scale SST gradients are weaker than average, for TCs that begin the ET process but do not complete it, compared with TCs that do. Further analysis suggests that the associated fine‐scale GS SST gradient anomalies are related to atmospheric processes but not the same as those that are typically associated with the onset of ET. As sensible heat flux gradients and surface diabatic frontogenesis are shown to generally scale with the local SST gradient strength, these results suggest that knowledge of the fine‐scale GS SST gradient in the weeks prior to the arrival of a TC might potentially provide additional information regarding the likelihood of that system completing ET.

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Air‐Sea Heat and Moisture Flux Gradients

Parfitt

2024

Geophysical Research Letters

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Air‐sea heat and moisture fluxes modulate the surface energy balance and oceanic and atmospheric heat transport across all timescales. Spatial gradients of these fluxes, on a multitude of spatial scales, also have significant impacts on the ocean and atmosphere. Nevertheless, analysis of these gradients, and discussion regarding our ability to represent them, is relatively absent within the community. This letter discusses their importance and presents a wintertime climatology. Their sensitivity to spatiotemporal scale and choice of data set is also examined in the mid‐latitudes. A lead‐lag analysis illustrates that wintertime air‐sea heat flux gradients in the Gulf Stream can precede the North Atlantic Oscillation by ∼1 month. A lack of observations and thus validation of air‐sea heat flux gradients represents a significant gap in our understanding of how air‐sea processes affect weather and climate, and warrants increased attention from the observational and modeling communities.

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A Monthly Index for the Large‐Scale Sea Surface Temperature Gradient Across the Separated Gulf Stream

Cited by 3 publications

References 48 publications

A Global Comparison of Marine Chlorophyll Variability Observed in Eulerian and Lagrangian Perspectives

A Global Comparison of Marine Chlorophyll Variability Observed in Eulerian and Lagrangian Perspectives

Gulf Stream Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Associated With the Extratropical Transition of North Atlantic Tropical Cyclones

Air‐Sea Heat and Moisture Flux Gradients

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