The maintenance of the ocean general circulation requires energy input from the wind. Previous studies estimate that the mean rate of wind work (or wind power) acting on the surface currents over the global ocean amounts to 1.1 TW (1 TW ! 10 Watts), though values remain highly uncertain. By analyzing the output from a range of ocean-only models and data assimilations, we show that the tropical ...

The effect of ocean mixed layer depth on climate is explored in a suite of slab ocean aquaplanet simulations with different mixed layer depths ranging from a globally uniform value of 50–2.4 m. In addition to the expected increase in the amplitude of the seasonal cycle in temperature with decreasing ocean mixed layer depth, the simulated climates differ in several less intuitive ways including ...

In this paper, environmental parameter estimation for a shallow ocean is addressed by using wideband shipping noise as a source of acoustic energy. Unknown locations of the broadband acoustic sources are estimated simultaneously with the ocean depth using the approximate Conditional Maximum Likelihood Estimator (CMLE). This procedure is tested via computer simulations and applied to the experim...

Chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is a ubiquitous component of the open ocean dissolved matter pool, and is important owing to its influence on the optical properties of the water column, its role in photochemistry and photobiology, and its utility as a tracer of deep ocean biogeochemical processes and circulation. In this review, we discuss the global distribution and dynamics of CD...

Evaporation from the sea surface, primarily within a hurricane’s core, provides the heat energy required to intensify and maintain the storm (e.g. Cione and Uhlhorn 2003, Emanuel 2003, and references therein). If the sea surface temperature (SST) decreases within the storm core, so does the heat energy available to the storm. Generally, in the deep ocean, SST cooling within the storm core occur...

OPINION article Front. Energy Res., 27 February 2023Sec. Process and Systems Engineering Volume 11 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2023.1115695

A number of recent papers have argued that the mechanical energy budget of the ocean places constraints on how the thermohaline circulation is driven. These papers have been used to argue that climate models, which do not specifically account for the energy of mixing, potentially miss a very important feedback on climate change. This paper reexamines the question of what energetic arguments can...