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Oceanic eddy-driven atmospheric secondary circulation in the winter Kuroshio Extension region

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Abstract

In the winter Kuroshio Extension region, the atmospheric response to oceanic eddies is studied using reanalysis and satellite data. The detected eddies in this region are mostly under the force of northwesterly wind, with the sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly located within the eddy. By examining the patterns of surface wind divergence, three types of atmospheric response are identified. The first type, which occupies 60%, is characterized by significant sea surface wind convergence and divergence at the edge and a vertical secondary circulation (SC) aloft, supporting the “vertical momentum mixing mechanism”. The SCs on anticyclonic eddies (AEs) can reach up to 300 hPa, but those on cyclonic eddies (CEs) are limited to 700 hPa. This can be explained by analyzing vertical eddy heat transport: When northwesterly wind passes the warmer center of an AE, it is from the cold to warm sea surface, resulting in stronger evaporation and convection, triggering stronger upward velocity and moist static heat flux. For the cases of CEs, the wind blows from warm to cold, which means less instability and less evaporation, resulting in weaker SCs. The second type, which occupies 10%, is characterized by divergence and a sea level pressure anomaly in the center, supported by the “pressure adjustment mechanism”. The other 30% are mostly weak eddies, and the atmospheric variation aloft is unrelated to the SST anomaly. Our work provides evidence for the different atmospheric responses over oceanic eddies and explains why SCs over AEs are much stronger than those over CEs by vertical heat flux analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and detailed suggestions to improve the manuscript. The altimeter data are obtained from the AVISO Web site at http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/data/index.html. The AMSR-E/AMSR2 rain rate satellite observations are available at http://www.remss.com. Thanks are due to NCAR/UCAR RDA for providing the CFSR reanalysis at rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds093.1. This study is supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDA11010203), the Chinese National Key Basic Research Program (G2012CB417401), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41176004, 41490643).

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  1. Physical Oceanography Laboratory and Qingdao Collaborative Innovation Center of Marine Science and Technology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Longjing Chen, Yinglai Jia & Qinyu Liu

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  1. Longjing Chen
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  2. Yinglai Jia
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Correspondence to Yinglai Jia.

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Chen, L., Jia, Y. & Liu, Q. Oceanic eddy-driven atmospheric secondary circulation in the winter Kuroshio Extension region. J Oceanogr 73, 295–307 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-016-0403-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-016-0403-z

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