Diurnal sea surface temperature variation and its impact on the atmosphere and ocean: A review

Abstract

The importance of the diurnal variability of sea surface temperature (SST) on air-sea interaction is now being increasingly recognized. This review synthesizes knowledge of the diurnal SST variation, mainly paying attention to its impact on the atmosphere or the ocean. Diurnal SST warming becomes evident when the surface wind is weak and insolation is strong. Recent observations using satellite data and advanced instruments have revealed that a large diurnal SST rise occurs over wide areas in a specific season, and in an extreme case the diurnal amplitude of SST exceeds 5 K. The large diurnal SST rise can lead to an increase in net surface heat flux from the ocean of 50–60 Wm−2 in the daytime. The temporal mean of the increase exceeds 10 Wm−2, which will be non-negligible for the atmosphere. A few numerical experiments have indicated that the diurnal SST variation can modify atmospheric properties over the Pacific warm pool or a coastal sea, but the processes underlying the modification have not yet been investigated in detail. Furthermore, it has been shown that the diurnal change of ocean mixing process near the surface must be considered correctly in order to reproduce SST variations on an intraseasonal scale in a numerical model. The variation of mixed-layer properties on the daily scale is nonlinearly related to the intraseasonal variability. The mixed-layer deepening/shoaling process on the daily scale will also be related to biological and material circulation processes.