TY - JOUR
T1 - Impacts of the Mesoscale Ocean-Atmosphere Coupling on the Peru-Chile Ocean Dynamics
T2 - The Current-Induced Wind Stress Modulation
AU - Oerder, V.
AU - Colas, F.
AU - Echevin, V.
AU - Masson, S.
AU - Lemarié, F.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is part of V. Oerder’s PhD thesis, sponsored by the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche. It is also part of the ANR project ‘‘PULSATION-11-MONU-010’’, the LEFE/GMMC project ‘‘NEMPECH’’ and the LMI DISCOH (IRD). Simulations were performed on the supercomputer Curie from the GENCI at the CEA (projects 2012061047, 2014102286, i2015016895 and x2016016895). The authors want to thank Christophe Hourdin, Francoise Pinsard, Eric Maisonnave for their help in setting-up the coupled model NEMO-OASIS-WRF and Gurvan Madec, Swen Jullien, Hervé Giordani, and Patrick Marchesiello for useful discussions. F. Lemarié acknowledges the support of the French LEFE/GMMC program through project SIMBAD. QSCAT WS data were provided by the CERSAT and are available online at ftp://ftp.ifremer.fr/ifremer/cersat/products/gridded/mwf-quikscat/data/. The OSCAR currents data were obtained from the NASA EOSDIS Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/dataset/ OSCAR L4 OC third-deg. Numerical data were obtained by model experiments described in section 2.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2018/2
Y1 - 2018/2
N2 - The ocean dynamical responses to the surface current-wind stress interaction at the oceanic mesoscale are investigated in the South-East Pacific using a high-resolution regional ocean-atmosphere coupled model. Two simulations are compared: one includes the surface current in the wind stress computation while the other does not. In the coastal region, absolute wind velocities are different between the two simulations but the wind stress remains very similar. As a consequence, the mean regional oceanic circulation is almost unchanged. On the contrary, the mesoscale activity is strongly reduced when taking into account the effect of the surface current on the wind stress. This is caused by a weakening of the eddy kinetic energy generation near the coast by the wind work and to intensified offshore eddy damping. We show that, above coherent eddies, the current-stress interaction generates eddy damping through Ekman pumping and eddy kinetic energy dissipation through wind work. This alters significantly the coherent eddy vertical structures compared with the control simulation, weakening the temperature and vorticity anomalies and increasing strongly the vertical velocity anomalies associated to eddies.
AB - The ocean dynamical responses to the surface current-wind stress interaction at the oceanic mesoscale are investigated in the South-East Pacific using a high-resolution regional ocean-atmosphere coupled model. Two simulations are compared: one includes the surface current in the wind stress computation while the other does not. In the coastal region, absolute wind velocities are different between the two simulations but the wind stress remains very similar. As a consequence, the mean regional oceanic circulation is almost unchanged. On the contrary, the mesoscale activity is strongly reduced when taking into account the effect of the surface current on the wind stress. This is caused by a weakening of the eddy kinetic energy generation near the coast by the wind work and to intensified offshore eddy damping. We show that, above coherent eddies, the current-stress interaction generates eddy damping through Ekman pumping and eddy kinetic energy dissipation through wind work. This alters significantly the coherent eddy vertical structures compared with the control simulation, weakening the temperature and vorticity anomalies and increasing strongly the vertical velocity anomalies associated to eddies.
KW - Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems
KW - mesoscale eddies
KW - ocean-atmosphere interaction
KW - wind stress
KW - wind work
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85041168208&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/2017JC013294
DO - 10.1002/2017JC013294
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85041168208
VL - 123
SP - 812
EP - 833
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
SN - 2169-9275
IS - 2
ER -