Data · dataset · 2026
North Atlantic subtropical mode water formation controlled by Gulf Stream fronts
Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research
The North Atlantic Ocean hosts the largest volume of global subtropical mode waters (STMWs) in the world, which serve as heat, carbon and oxygen silos in the ocean interior.
Description
STMWs are formed in the Gulf Stream region where thermal fronts are pervasive and result in feedback with the atmosphere. However, their roles in STMW formation have been overlooked.
Using eddy-resolving global climate simulations, we find that suppressing local frontal-scale ocean-to-atmosphere (FOA) feedback leads to STMW formation being reduced almost by half. This is because FOA feedback enlarges STMW outcropping, attributable to the mixed layer deepening associated with cumulative excessive latent heat loss due to higher wind speeds and greater air-sea humidity contrast driven by the Gulf Stream fronts.
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Such enhanced heat loss overshadows the stronger restratification induced by vertical eddies and turbulent heat transport, making STMW colder and heavier. With more realistic representation of FOA feedback, the eddy-present/rich coupled global climate models reproduce the observed STMWs much better than the eddy-free ones. Such improvement in STMW production cannot be achieved, even with the oceanic resolution solely refined but without coupling to the overlying atmosphere in oceanic general circulation models.
Our findings highlight the need to resolve FOA feedback to ameliorate the common severe underestimation of STMW and associated heat and carbon uptakes in earth system models.
Links
Get the data
- Publisher page n2t.org/ark:/85065/d76h4nfc ↗
documentation · download · from data ucar edu
Where it is published
- data.ucar.edu /dataset/north-atlantic-subtropical-mode-water-formation-contro… ↗
National Center for Atmospheric Research dataset page
landing page · from data ucar edu
Catalogue records · 1
- CKAN API data.ucar.edu/api/3/action/package_show?id=ab3de2d8-5c41-430c-a22b-0132bc534… ↗
metadata API · from data ucar edu
Topics
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Oceanography 69%
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Center for Atmospheric Research | ab3de2d8-5c41-430c-a22b-0132bc53481f | 12 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:group:3708 | enrichment · data ucar edu | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (69%) |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| created_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /notes |
| publication_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /title |
| updated_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 |