Surface Heating Steers Planetary-Scale Ocean Circulation

Abstract

Abstract Gyres are central features of large-scale ocean circulation and are involved in transporting tracers such as heat, nutrients, and carbon dioxide within and across ocean basins. Traditionally, the gyre circulation is thought to be driven by surface winds and quantified via Sverdrup balance, but it has been proposed that surface buoyancy fluxes may also contribute to gyre forcing. Through a series of eddy-permitting global ocean model simulations with perturbed surface forcing, the relative contribution of wind stress and surface heat flux forcing to the large-scale ocean circulation is investigated, focusing on the subtropical gyres. In addition to gyre strength being linearly proportional to wind stress, it is shown that the gyre circulation is strongly impacted by variations in the surface heat flux (specifically, its meridional gradient) through a rearrangement of the ocean’s buoyancy structure. On shorter time scales (∼10 years), the gyre circulation anomalies are proportional to the magnitude of the surface heat flux gradient perturbation, with up to ∼0.15 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) anomaly induced per watt per square meter change in the surface heat flux. On time scales longer than a decade, the gyre response to surface buoyancy flux gradient perturbations becomes nonlinear as ocean circulation anomalies feed back onto the buoyancy structure induced by the surface buoyancy fluxes. These interactions complicate the development of a buoyancy-driven theory for the gyres to complement the Sverdrup relation. The flux-forced simulations underscore the importance of surface buoyancy forcing in steering the large-scale ocean circulation. Significance Statement Ocean gyres are large swirling circulation features that redistribute heat across ocean basins. It is commonly believed that surface winds are the sole driver of ocean gyres, but recent literature suggests that other mechanisms could also be influential. We perform a series of numerical simulations in which we artificially change either the winds or the heating at the ocean’s surface and investigate how each factor independently affects the ocean gyres. We find that gyres are steered by both winds and surface heating, and that the ocean circulation responds differently to heating on short and long time scales. In addition, the circulation depends on where the heating is applied at the ocean’s surface. Through these simulations, we argue that a complete theory about ocean gyres must consider heating at the ocean’s surface as a possible driver, in addition to the winds.