Interannual South Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Variability in an Eddy-Resolving Coupled Climate Model

Alexandra Gronholz1,2, Hosmay Lopez3, Shenfu Dong4, Gustavo Jorge Goni5 and Molly O'Neil Baringer5, (1)Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, The Ocean in the Earth System, Hamburg, Germany, (2)Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, University of Miami, Miami, United States, (3)UM-CIMAS/NOAA-AOML, Miami, FL, United States, (4)AOML/NOAA, Miami, United States, (5)NOAA/AOML, Miami, FL, United States
Abstract:
Early studies suggested the importance of the South Atlantic Ocean Heat Content (OHC) variability and its potential role in modulating global and regional scale phenomena, such as global monsoon circulations on decadal time scales. Most previous model studies on the South Atlantic are based on low-resolution model simulations, mainly due to computational limitations. We present here results obtained using a high-resolution fully coupled climate simulation. Result show that the origin of OHC variability is dependent on whether oceanic mesoscale features are resolved. Interannual OHC changes in the high-resolution simulation are dominated by meridional heat transport (MHT) variability in the south-east of the basin. Based on these results, we present here more detailed analyses on the driving processes of interannual OHC and MHT variability in the South Atlantic, including the role of larger-scale climate phenomena, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole.