On account of the large thermal capacity of seawater and the slowly varying oceanic currents, the surface conditions of the world’s oceans typically fluctuate on timescales that are much longer than those of the atmosphere. Meteorologists have long regarded the surface properties of the oceans (in particular, sea surface temperature, or SST) as a prime candidate for inciting low-frequency atmos...

Salinity, rather than temperature, is the leading influence on density in some regions of the world's upper oceans. In the Bay of Bengal, heavy monsoonal rains and runoff generate strong salinity gradients that define density fronts and stratification in the upper ~50 m. Ship-based observations made in winter reveal that fronts exist over a wide range of length scales, but at O(1)-km scales, ho...

Multi-sensor data from different satellites are used to identify an upwelling area in the sea off northeast Taiwan. Sea surface temperature (SST) data derived from infrared and microwave, as well as sea surface height anomaly (SSHA) data derived from satellite altimeters are used for this study. An integration filtering algorithm based on SST data is developed for detecting the cold patch induc...

[1] The controlling mechanism of the seasonal cycle of surface partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) in the central/eastern equatorial Pacific is studied using a coupled physicalbiogeochemical model. The model results indicate that the individual components of physical transport of total CO2 (TCO2) in the Niño3 area are out of phase with each other such that the net TCO2 transport is an order smaller....

Almost all climate models in Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project phase five (CMIP5) were found to have a cold bias in Sea Surface Temperature (SST) over the northern Arabian Sea, which is linked to the biases in the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM). This cold SST bias was attributed to the anomalous cold winds from the north-western part of south Asian landmass during boreal winter. However, the ...

Sea surface temperature (SST) data are often provided as gridded products, typically at resolutions of order 0.05◦ from satellite observations to reduce data volume at the request of data users and facilitate comparison against other products or models. Sampling uncertainty is introduced in gridded products where the full surface area of the ocean within a grid cell cannot be fully observed bec...

The classic Frankignoul–Hasselmann hypothesis for sea surface temperature (SST) variability of an oceanic mixed layer assumes that the surface heat flux can be simply parameterized as noise induced by atmospheric variability plus a linear temperature relaxation rate. It is suggested here, however, that rapid fluctuations in this rate, as might be expected, for example, from gustiness of the sea...

Our purpose is to detect ocean surface features, specifically oceanic thermal fronts, through analysis of SAR (synthetic aperture radar)-derived wind stress fields. Fine-resolution measurements of near-surface wind speeds over the Gulf Stream region of the Northwest Atlantic were made using SAR images collected by RADARSAT-2. Linear statistical relationships between the wind stress curl and div...

The Tropical Rainfall Mapping Mission Microwave Imager (TMI) instrument Sea Surface Temperature (SST) product (v1.0) is compared with in situ observations obtained in the Atlantic Ocean. The TMI SST has a mean warm bias of 0.25K¡0.7K when compared to in situ SST at a depth of 7m. When TMI SST are compared to in situ skin SST measurements, the bias is 0.6K¡0.5K. A limited global comparison betwe...

Observational analysis suggests that the western tropical Pacific (WTP) sea surface temperature (SST) shows predominant variability over multidecadal time scales, which is unlikely to be explained by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. Here we show that this variability is largely explained by the remote Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO). A suite of Atlantic Pacemaker experiments succes...