Effects of mesoscale eddy/wind interactions on biological newproduction and eddy kinetic energy

摘要

Accounting for ocean currents in the bulk parameterization of the wind stress mightrepresent a physically more plausible way to force an ocean model than ignoring their effect.We show in this study that using the air-sea velocity difference instead of the atmospheric windin the wind stress formulation dampens both the near-surface eddy activity and the bioticcarbon assimilation in a high-resolution model of the North Atlantic. The former is significant,corresponding to a reduction down to 50% in the tropical Atlantic, while in higher latitudes(in agreement with previous results) the reduction of eddy activity is only around 10%.The effect on biotically mediated new production and air-sea carbon fluxes is, on the otherhand, minor. New production is reduced by less than 5% on a basin average, while simulatedair-sea CO2 fluxes are barely affected at all. The model results imply that eddy/windinteraction introduced by accounting for ocean currents in the wind stress formulation does notdrive any additional (and hitherto unaccounted) nutrient fluxes to the sunlit surface of thesubtropical gyre, as was recently proposed in the literature.