Upper-ocean heat budget and ocean eddy transport in the south-east Pacific in a high-resolution coupled model

摘要: We present an analysis of the oceanic heat advection and its variability in upper 500 m southeastern tropical Pacific (100W–75W, 25S–10S) as simulated by global coupled model HiGEM, which has one highest resolutions currently used long-term integrations. The climatology represents a temperature field arising from transient small-scale ( 4 months), specific locations they generate important contribution to local upper-ocean budget, characterised scales few hundred kilometres, periods over year. such structures local, budget however can be either sign, or vanishing, depending on location; and, although there appears some organisation preferential areas activity, average entire region is small. While several different mechanisms may responsible for transients, we find that significant, possibly dominant, component associated with vortices embedded large-scale, climatological salinity gradient fresh intrusion mid-latitude intermediate water penetrates north-westward beneath thermocline.