Identification

Title

Ocean viscosity and climate

Abstract

The impacts of parameterized lateral ocean viscosity on climate are explored using three 120-year integrations of a fully coupled climate model. Reducing viscosity leads to a generally improved ocean circulation at the expense of increased numerical noise. Five domains are discussed in detail: the equatorial Pacific, where the emergence of tropical instability waves reduces the cold tongue bias; the Southern Ocean, where the Antarctic Circumpolar Current increases its kinetic energy but reduces its transport; the Arctic Ocean, where an improved representation of the Atlantic inflow leads to a better sea-ice distribution; the North Pacific, where the more realistic path of the Kuroshio leads to more realistic temperatures across the midlatitude Pacific; and the northern marginal seas, where stronger boundary currents lead to significantly less sea-ice. Although the ocean circulation and sea-ice distribution improve, the oceanic heat uptake, the poleward heat transport, and the large scale atmospheric circulation are not changed significantly. In particular, the improvements to the equatorial cold tongue did not lead to better representation of tropical precipitation or El Niño.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zw1m3z

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-06-14T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact