Abstract
The heat imbalance is the fundamental driver for the atmospheric circulation. Therefore, it is crucially important to understand how it responds to global warming. In this study, the role of the ocean in reshaping the atmospheric meridional heat imbalance is explored based on observations and climate simulations. We found that ocean tends to strengthen the meridional heat imbalance over the mid-latitudes. This is primarily because of the uneven ocean heat uptake between the subtropical and subpolar oceans. Under global warming, the subtropical ocean absorbs relatively less heat as the water there is well stratified. In contrast, the subpolar ocean is the primary region where the ocean heat uptake takes place, because the subpolar ocean is dominated by upwelling, strong mixing, and overturning circulation. We propose that the enhanced meridional heat imbalance may potentially contribute to strengthening the water cycle, westerlies, jet stream, and mid-latitude storms.
Highlights
The uneven heat distribution between the tropics and the poles is the fundamental driver for the atmospheric circulation [1]
We demonstrate that the subtropical ocean tends to release more turbulent heat fluxes (THF) compared to that of the subpolar ocean
Since THF datasets differ in their temporal coverage, here, we present the linear trend of THF in their overlapped period, i.e., 1979–2018
Summary
The uneven heat distribution between the tropics and the poles is the fundamental driver for the atmospheric circulation [1]. As the lower boundary of the atmosphere, the oceans impact the weather and climate primarily by exchanging heat with the atmosphere [2]. The THF primarily explain the variability of ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, and are commonly referred to as the language of ocean-atmosphere interaction [3,4]. The variability of THF reflects the ocean-atmosphere interaction on multiple temporal and spatial scales. On a multi-decadal timescale, sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies control the variability of THF over the North Atlantic Ocean [3] and shape the climate over North America and Europe [11,12]. Sea introduces a variability of ocean surface THF and triggers the ocean convective overturning, Atmosphere 2019, 10, 746; doi:10.3390/atmos10120746 www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere. Our results, supported by both observations and climate simulations, highlight that ocean induces a strengthening meridional heat imbalance over the mid-latitude, even though there is an overall weakening meridional heat imbalance as a consequence of polar amplification [18,19]
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