A paper published in Science estimated the oceanic sink of the anthropogenic CO2 (Cant) over the period of 1994 to 2007 by comparing observations collected from global repeated hydrography cruises between 2003 and 2007 to those from the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS) program during the 1980s and early 1990s. The... Continue Reading →
Stratocumulus clouds aloft the eastern subtropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans cool the ocean by shading it from solar radiation. The stratocumulus cloud droplets absorb and emit longwave radiation very efficiently, while downwelling longwave flux above the cloud tops originates from high altitude and thus cooler atmospheric temperatures (becasue the free troposphere above the stratocumulus clouds is dry and has... Continue Reading →
As the ocean absorbs anthropogenic CO2, its pH and carbonate ion concentration decrease, thereby decreasing the ratio of the concentration of dissolved carbonate ions in the sea water to the concentration of dissolved ions in a saturated solution of aragonite (i.e., aragonite saturation state ΩAr). If ΩAr falls below the threshold ΩAr=1, ocean acidification makes it harder... Continue Reading →
According to model simulations with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the zonal mean temperature in the atmosphere get warmer in the troposphere (< 10km or > 100hPa) and colder in the stratosphere (10 ~ 50km or 100 ~ 1hPa). A simple explanation is that the amount of infrared heat radiated out to the space... Continue Reading →
2019 US severe weather season started with 39 reported tornadoes throughout southeastern Alabama, Georgia, Florida Panhandle and South Carolina in March 3. At least 20 people have been confirmed dead in Lee County, Alabama alone. On March 2 at 10:51am, NOAA/SPC forecasted an enhanced risk of severe thunderstorms for Sunday, March 3, from southern Alabama... Continue Reading →
Driven by the Beaufort High and associated wind-stress curl, the anticyclonic ocean gyre over the Canada Basin, as known as the Beaufort Gyre, is a dominant feature of the Arctic Ocean circulation. The Beaufort Gyre is the largest freshwater reservoir in the Arctic Ocean (Proshutinsky et al., 2009) and also is a region of the largest summer sea... Continue Reading →
Conventional view so far has been that El Nino - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is largely responsible for energizing the dominant modes of SST variability in the tropical Atlantic and Indian Oceans through changes in the Walker circulation and extratropical atmospheric waves. However, recent studies have shown that SST variability in the tropical Atlantic and Indian... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 