The impact of mesoscale eddies on the air-sea turbulent heat fluxes in the South Atlantic

• Autor(a) principal: Boas, Ana Beatriz de Figueiredo Melo Villas
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/21/21135/tde-12022015-140809/
• topic: Air-sea interactions; Atlântico Sul; Fluxos turbulentos de calor pela superfície; Interações oceano-atmosfera; Mesoscale eddies; South Atlantic; Surface turbulent heat fluxes; Vórtices de meso-escala

By collocating 10 years (1999-2009) of remotely sensed surface turbulent heat fluxes with satellite altimetry data, we investigate the impact of ocean mesoscale eddies on the latent and sensible heat fluxes in the South Atlantic ocean. Eddies were identified using the method proposed by Chaigneau et al. (2009), which is based on closed contours of sea level anomaly. Most of the identified eddies had a radius of ~70 km and amplitude of ~5 cm. On average, in the South Atlantic, eddies play a minor role on the ocean-atmosphere heat exchange. However, in strongly energetic regions such as the Brazil-Malvinas confluence or Agulhas Current retroflection regions, eddies can account up to 20-30% of the total variance of the surface turbulent heat fluxes with averaged anomalies of ±10-20 W/m2 for both heat flux components. Cyclonic (anticyclonic) eddies, associated with negative (positive) heat fluxes anomalies tend to cool (warm) the overlying atmosphere. A composite analysis of the turbulent heat fluxes anomalies within the eddies reveals a direct relationship between the eddy amplitude and the intensity of the latent and sensible fluxes anomalies, such that large-amplitude eddies have a stronger signature in the turbulent surface heat fluxes. Heat fluxes anomalies are also much stronger near the eddy centers and decay radially to reach minimum values outside the eddies.