Coupling analyses of new high-resolution regional ocean climatologies and ocean model output in relation to long-term AMOC fluctuations

New global and regional high-resolution ocean climatologies have a great potential for climate-scale analyses through data-model comparison. Quality-controlled high-resolution climatologies that retain many critical mesoscale hydrographic features (such as persistent oceanic fronts, topographically controlled quasi-stationary meanders, etc.) become suitable for climate-scale interpretation through meaningful comparison between observations and high-resolution ocean model output. Leveraging the regularly sampled, synoptic depiction of the ocean contained in the model output we can assess the undersampled high-frequency variability contained in the quality controlled observational record that is inherently aliased into the climatology to discern longer period oscillations, differences, and trends. We couple the recently developed Arctic, Northwest Atlantic and Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian Seas regional climatologies (with grid resolution of 1/10-degree–the highest regional resolution so far), with synergistic analyses of output from a data-assimilating ocean numerical model. By comparing the climatological fields with the model output, the authors explore the ability to quantify the relations between modeled and observed regional ocean variability, including the decadal-scale climatology differences that will focus on and may reflect AMOC long-term fluctuations.