OS43C-1294:
Eddy diffusivity in the equatorial and tropical Pacific Ocean diagnosed from an ocean state estimate
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Marianna Linz1, Raffaele M Ferrari1 and Raymond Alan Plumb2, (1)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, (2)MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States
Abstract:
We present analysis of eddy diffusivity in the equatorial and tropical Pacific Ocean based on18 years of output from a 1/6 degree ocean state estimate. The data product from the Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) group at JPL is a free running model with initial conditions, boundary conditions and parameterizations fit to the available satellite, buoy, float, and ship data using a Green’s function approach. The average surface diffusivity in the tropical Pacific estimated using salinity is found to be around 4000 m2/s, with salinity behaving as a passive tracer. We explore the latitudinal dependence of the eddy diffusivity and compare the implied eddy stresses to the wind stress forcing.
