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Interannual-decadal variability of wintertime mixed layer depths in the North Pacific detected by an ensemble of ocean syntheses

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Abstract

The interannual-decadal variability of the wintertime mixed layer depths (MLDs) over the North Pacific is investigated from an empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of an ensemble of global ocean reanalyses. The first leading EOF mode represents the interannual MLD anomalies centered in the eastern part of the central mode water formation region in phase opposition with those in the eastern subtropics and the central Alaskan Gyre. This first EOF mode is highly correlated with the Pacific decadal oscillation index on both the interannual and decadal time scales. The second leading EOF mode represents the MLD variability in the subtropical mode water (STMW) formation region and has a good correlation with the wintertime West Pacific (WP) index with time lag of 3 years, suggesting the importance of the oceanic dynamical response to the change in the surface wind field associated with the meridional shifts of the Aleutian Low. The above MLD variabilities are in basic agreement with previous observational and modeling findings. Moreover the reanalysis ensemble provides uncertainty estimates. The interannual MLD anomalies in the first and second EOF modes are consistently represented by the individual reanalyses and the amplitudes of the variabilities generally exceed the ensemble spread of the reanalyses. Besides, the resulting MLD variability indices, spanning the 1948–2012 period, should be helpful for characterizing the North Pacific climate variability. In particular, a 6-year oscillation including the WP teleconnection pattern in the atmosphere and the oceanic MLD variability in the STMW formation region is first detected.

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Acknowledgments

We thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. Thanks are extended to Dr. H. Tsujino and Dr. K. Sakamoto for their kind and valuable advices. This work was partly supported by the Research Program on Climate Change Adaptation (RECCA) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of the Japanese government (MEXT), by the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) of the MEXT, by the joint UK DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101), by the UK Public Weather Service Research Programme, and by the European Commission funded projects MyOcean (FP7-SPACE-2007-1) and MyOcean2 (FP7-SPACE-2011-1). During the preparation of this article, our co-author Nicolas Ferry passed away. He was an active and supportive member of the ORA-IP and CLIVAR-GSOP activities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oceanography and Geochemistry Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency (MRI/JMA), 1-1 Nagamine, Tsukuba, 305-0052, Japan

    Takahiro Toyoda, Yosuke Fujii, Tsurane Kuragano, Naohiro Kosugi, Daisuke Sasano & Masafumi Kamachi

  2. Center for Earth Information Science and Technology, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (CEIST/JAMSTEC), Yokohama, Japan

    Yoichi Ishikawa

  3. Research and Development Center for Global Change (RCGC), JAMSTEC, Yokosuka, Japan

    Shuhei Masuda & Kanako Sato

  4. Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Toshiyuki Awaji

  5. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Toulouse, France

    Fabrice Hernandez

  6. Mercator Océan, Ramonville Saint-Agne, France

    Fabrice Hernandez & Nicolas Ferry

  7. Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), Ramonville Saint-Agne, France

    Stéphanie Guinehut

  8. Met Office, Exeter, UK

    Matthew Martin, K. Andrew Peterson & Simon A. Good

  9. National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), Department of Meteorology, University of Reading (U-Reading), Reading, UK

    Maria Valdivieso & Keith Haines

  10. Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC), Bologna, Italy

    Andrea Storto & Simona Masina

  11. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Bologna, Italy

    Simona Masina

  12. Universität Hamburg (U-Hamburg), Hamburg, Germany

    Armin Köhl

  13. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), Melbourne, Australia

    Yonghong Yin, Li Shi & Oscar Alves

  14. Environment Canada, Quebec, Canada

    Gregory Smith

  15. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (GFDL/NOAA), Princeton, NJ, USA

    You-Soon Chang

  16. Kongju National University, Kongju, South Korea

    You-Soon Chang

  17. Science System and Applications, Inc., Lanham, MD, USA

    Guillaume Vernieres

  18. Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC/NASA/GMAO), Greenbelt, MD, USA

    Guillaume Vernieres

  19. Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Xiaochun Wang

  20. Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA

    Gael Forget & Patrick Heimbach

  21. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Ou Wang, Ichiro Fukumori & Tong Lee

  22. European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), Reading, UK

    Hao Zuo & Magdalena Balmaseda

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  1. Takahiro Toyoda
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  2. Yosuke Fujii
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  3. Tsurane Kuragano
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  4. Naohiro Kosugi
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  6. Masafumi Kamachi
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  13. Stéphanie Guinehut
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  14. Matthew Martin
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  15. K. Andrew Peterson
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  17. Maria Valdivieso
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  23. Li Shi
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  25. Gregory Smith
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  26. You-Soon Chang
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  27. Guillaume Vernieres
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  28. Xiaochun Wang
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  29. Gael Forget
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  33. Tong Lee
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  35. Magdalena Balmaseda
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Takahiro Toyoda.

Additional information

This paper is a contribution to the special issue on Ocean estimation from an ensemble of global ocean reanalyses consisting of papers from the Ocean Reanalyses Intercomparsion Project (ORAIP), coordinated by CLIVAR-GSOP and GODAE OceanView. The special issue also contains specific studies using single reanalysis systems.

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Toyoda, T., Fujii, Y., Kuragano, T. et al. Interannual-decadal variability of wintertime mixed layer depths in the North Pacific detected by an ensemble of ocean syntheses. Clim Dyn 49, 891–907 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-015-2762-3

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