Physical Oceanography Division

09/01/2012 - 10/31/2012

Several AOML and CIMAS scientists participated in the annual U.S. Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) held in Boulder, Colorado on August 15-17, 2012. The U.S. AMOC meeting brought together approximately 90 U.S. and international scientists to discuss advances in understanding the state, variability, and predictability of the AMOC from observational and numerical modeling perspectives.

01/20/2011 - 08/01/2011

Physical Oceanographers Molly Baringer and Gustavo Goni, together with scientists from CSIRO in Australia are organizing the First International XBT Science Workshop (XSW-1) in Melbourne, Australia, July 7-8, 2011.

07/01/2013 - 07/15/2013

In a recent study by scientists at Boston University, PHOD, and NCAR, a new mechanism was uncovered for initiating ENSO events wherein SLP-generated North Pacific trade winds induce subsurface heat content changes that serve as precursors to El Ninos. This trade-wind charging mechanism of the equatorial Pacific is fundamentally different from any previously diagnosed, and studies examining the surface and subsurface ocean dynamics associated with this mechanism are underway.

06/15/2013 - 06/30/2013

Scientists at PHOD developed a synthetic method, which combines high-density expendable bathythermograph (XBT) temperature data along the AX08 XBT transect (which runs between Cape Town and NYC) with altimetric sea level anomalies, to estimate the variability of the off-equatorial currents, such as the North Equatorial Countercurrent and the North Equatorial Undercurrent, on seasonal to interannual timescales. Understanding how the ocean dynamics is liked to anomalies of temperature and wind-stress in the tropical Atlantic is critical to understand the climate and weather variability in the adjacent continental areas.

05/30/2013 - 06/15/2013

In an article recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Climate, PHOD scientists show that the variation of surface and subsurface ocean temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic (TNA) is important to and linked with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Results presented here suggest that the subsurface ocean temperature variation in the TNA can be taken as a fingerprint for the AMOC variability, and it also has an important implication for interpreting hurricane acticity in terms of multidecadal ocean temperature variation in the TNA.

05/07/2013 - 05/28/2013

Using over 30 years of observations from drogued, satellite-tracked surface drifting buoys, Lumpkin and Johnson (2013) developed a methodology to map seasonally-varying surface currents at 1/2 degree resolution. Results from this study can be used to better understand how the ocean transports properties like heat, salt, and passive tracers, and serves as a reference to study changes in ocean currents over time. One key result from this study is the global distribution of mean, seasonal and eddy kinetic energy, which totals 4.6x10 17 J in the upper 30 m of the ocean and reveals the presence of three large eddy "deserts", one in the Atlantic Ocean and the other two in the Pacific.

09/01/2012 - 11/01/2012

A news article that appeared in The New York Times on August 27 shows the ocean conditions in the Gulf of Mexico during hurricanes Katrina (August 2005) and Isaac (August 2012). The ocean conditions are depicted by the upper ocean heat content derived from satellite altimetry using a methodology developed at NOAA/AOML. The upper ocean heat content had larger values during Katrina mainly due to an anticyclonic warm ring and an extended Loop Current. These conditions, not found during the passage of Hurricane Isaac, partly contributed to the intensification of Katrina.

09/01/2012 - 10/01/2012

The record-breaking U.S. tornado outbreaks in the spring of 2011 prompt the need to identify long-term climate signals that could potentially provide seasonal predictability for U.S. tornado outbreaks. A new research led by scientists in the Physical Oceanography Division of NOAA-AOML used both observations and model experiments to show that a positive phase Trans-Niño may be one such climate signal.

11/01/2011 - 12/01/2011

In this study highlighted in the Editors' Choice of Science Magazine ( issue of Oct. 21, 2011 ), NOAA scientists have identified a relationship between large–scale climate factors, the Atlantic warm pool, and hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. This relationship indicates that a large warm pool is an unfavorable condition for hurricanes to landfall on the United States coast.

09/01/2011 - 10/15/2011

A new study led by researchers from University of Miami, NOAA-AOML, IFM-GEOMAR, and NCAR explores why the Atlantic Ocean has warmed substantially more than any other ocean basin since the 1950s. The research article published in the Geophysical Research letters evidences that the observed large warming of the Atlantic Ocean since the 1950s is largely induced by an increase in the inter-ocean heat transport from the Indian Ocean via the Agulhas leakage. The study points to an important role played by the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) in the South Atlantic in enhancing the secular warming of the Atlantic Ocean.

01/21/2011 - 02/28/2011

03/01/2010 - 04/15/2010

In articles published in the scientific journal of Geophysical Research Letters and the AGU Newspaper of EOS, AOML’s scientists Chunzai Wang and Sang-Ki Lee show that tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic varies out-of-phase with that in the eastern North Pacific on both interannual and multidecadal timescales. That is, when tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic increases (decreases), tropical cyclone activity in the eastern North Pacific decreases (increases). Both vertical wind shear and convective instability contribute to the out-of-phase relationship, whereas relative humidity and vorticity variations at the lower troposphere do not seem to cause the relationship.