edu.ucar.opensky::articles:25824 UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact 2025-12-24T22:42:21.284935 ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data ISO 19115-2:2009(E) https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d70005wv https://doi.org/10.17882/42182 https Related Dataset #1 Argo float data and metadata from Global Data Assembly Centre (Argo GDAC) Surface water mass transformation in the Southern Ocean: The role of eddies revisited 2022-06-01T00:00:00Z publication https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d70005wv https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-21-0087.1 Small, R. Justin author Bryan, Frank O. author Bishop, S. P. author UCAR/NCAR - Library publisher The water mass transformation (WMT) framework describes how water of one class, such as a discrete interval of density, is converted into another class via air-sea fluxes or interior mixing processes. This paper investigates how this process is modified at the surface when mesoscale ocean eddies are present, using a state-of-the-art high-resolution climate model with reasonable fidelity in the Southern Ocean. The method employed is to coarse-grain the high-resolution model fields to remove eddy signatures, and compare the results with those from the full model fields. This method shows that eddies reduced the WMT by 2-4 Sv (10%-20%; 1 Sv 10(6) m(3) s(-1)) over a wide range of densities, from typical values of 20 Sv in the smoothed case. The corresponding water mass formation was reduced by 40% at one particular density increment, namely, between 1026.4 and 1026.5 kg m(-3), which corresponds to the lighter end of the range of Indian Ocean Mode Water in the model. The effect of eddies on surface WMT is decomposed into three terms: direct modulation of the density outcrops, then indirectly, by modifying the air-sea density flux, and the combined effect of the two, akin to a covariance. It is found that the first and third terms dominate, i.e., smoothing the outcrops alone has a significant effect, as does the combination of smoothing both outcrops and density flux distributions, but smoothing density flux fields alone has little effect. Results from the coarse-graining method are compared to an alternative approach of temporally averaging the data. Implications for climate model resolution are also discussed. UCAR/NCAR - Library OpenSky Support PO Box 3000 Boulder CO 80307-3000 opensky@ucar.edu http://opensky.ucar.edu/ homepage pointOfContact PDF Text theme Resource Type 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z publication Copyright 2022 American Meteorological Society (AMS). None eng geoscientificInformation