Analysis of mean solution characteristics of an eddy-resolving numerical model simulating tropical instability waves in the Pacific Ocean

Abstract

Using an eddy-resolving ocean general circulation model called INMIO, we study mean thermohydrodynamic conditions in which the equatorial convergence of eddy meridional heat transport (MHT) is formed by tropical instability waves (TIWs). In nature the TIWs warm the well-known cold tongue of the East Pacific waters. The model has sufficient resolution to reproduce the TIWs, but in the vicinity of 110ºW it shows significantly underestimated convergence values compared to estimates of direct observations. Analysis of mean temperature distributions in comparison with the WOA09 climatology suggests that the underestimation of the eddy MHT convergence is a model bias, rather than an error of the observational data.