Ocean Reference Stations: Long-Term, Open-Ocean Observations of Surface Meteorology and Air–Sea Fluxes Are Essential Benchmarks

Details

• Journal Title:
  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
• Personal Author:
  Weller, Robert A. ; Lukas, Roger ; Potemra, James ; Plueddemann, Albert J. ; Fairall, Chris ; Bigorre, Sebastien
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; PSL (Physical Sciences Laboratory)
• Description:
  There is great interest in improving our understanding of the respective roles of the ocean and atmosphere in variability and change in weather and climate. Due to the sparsity of sustained observing sites in the open ocean, information about the air–sea exchanges of heat, freshwater, and momentum is often drawn from models. In this paper observations from three long-term surface moorings deployed in the trade wind regions of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans are used to compare observed means and low-passed air–sea fluxes from the moorings with coincident records from three atmospheric reanalyses (ERA5, NCEP-2, and MERRA-2) and from CMIP6 coupled models. To set the stage for the comparison, the methodologies of maintaining the long-term surface moorings, known as ocean reference stations (ORS), and assessing the accuracies of their air–sea fluxes are described first. Biases in the reanalyses’ means and low-passed wind stresses and net air–sea heat fluxes are significantly larger than the observational uncertainties and in some case show variability in time. These reanalyses and most CMIP6 models fail to provide as much heat into the ocean as observed. In the discussion and conclusions section, long-term observing sites in the open ocean are seen as essential, independent benchmarks not only to document the coupling between the atmosphere and ocean but also to promote collaborative efforts to assess and improve the ability of models to simulate air–sea fluxes.
• Keywords:
  • Atmospheric Science
  • Climate records
  • Atmosphere-ocean interaction
  • Model evaluation/performance
  • Model errors
  • Surface observations
• Source:
  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 103(8), E1968-E1990
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0084.1
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Rights Information:
  Other
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/47889/noaa_47889_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 21.32 MB]
• Collection(s):
  Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR)
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:04b6dda9c84091323ccea263ce6ad8ccb53a61409c5380a78ea3dda88ae7c1d8