Schanze Julian J.

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Schanze
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Julian J.
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  • Article
    Satellite and in situ salinity : understanding near-surface stratification and subfootprint variability
    (American Meteorological Society, 2016-08-31) Boutin, Jacqueline ; Chao, Yi ; Asher, William E. ; Delcroix, Thierry ; Drucker, Robert S. ; Drushka, Kyla ; Kolodziejczyk, Nicolas ; Lee, Tong ; Reul, Nicolas ; Reverdin, Gilles ; Schanze, Julian J. ; Soloviev, Alexander ; Yu, Lisan ; Anderson, Jessica ; Brucker, Ludovic ; Dinnat, Emmanuel ; Santos-Garcia, Andrea ; Jones, W. Linwood ; Maes, Christophe ; Meissner, Thomas ; Tang, Wenqing ; Vinogradova, Nadya ; Ward, Brian
    Remote sensing of salinity using satellite-mounted microwave radiometers provides new perspectives for studying ocean dynamics and the global hydrological cycle. Calibration and validation of these measurements is challenging because satellite and in situ methods measure salinity differently. Microwave radiometers measure the salinity in the top few centimeters of the ocean, whereas most in situ observations are reported below a depth of a few meters. Additionally, satellites measure salinity as a spatial average over an area of about 100 × 100 km2. In contrast, in situ sensors provide pointwise measurements at the location of the sensor. Thus, the presence of vertical gradients in, and horizontal variability of, sea surface salinity complicates comparison of satellite and in situ measurements. This paper synthesizes present knowledge of the magnitude and the processes that contribute to the formation and evolution of vertical and horizontal variability in near-surface salinity. Rainfall, freshwater plumes, and evaporation can generate vertical gradients of salinity, and in some cases these gradients can be large enough to affect validation of satellite measurements. Similarly, mesoscale to submesoscale processes can lead to horizontal variability that can also affect comparisons of satellite data to in situ data. Comparisons between satellite and in situ salinity measurements must take into account both vertical stratification and horizontal variability.
  • Article
    The global oceanic freshwater cycle : a state-of-the-art quantification
    (Sears Foundation for Marine Research, 2010-05-01) Schanze, Julian J. ; Schmitt, Raymond W. ; Yu, Lisan
    The current capabilities of quantifying the oceanic freshwater cycle are shown based on new observations from satellite data and re-analysis models for evaporation and precipitation over the ocean. For this purpose, we analyze the homogeneity and internal consistency of eight evaporation and seven precipitation products. Discontinuities are found around 1987 for all datasets, attributable to the launch of a microwave imaging satellite. Based on a review of comparisons with independent data and these analyses, the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) and the Objectively Analyzed Ocean-Atmosphere Fluxes (OAFlux) evaporation product are combined with a state-of-the-art river discharge dataset to produce a new estimate of the global oceanic freshwater cycle for 1987-2006. The annual mean precipitation into the ocean averaged over 19 years is estimated at 12.2±1.2 Sv, the evaporative loss at 13.0±1.3 Sv, and the total freshwater input from land at 1.25±0.1 Sv. The oceanic budget closes within the errors estimated for each data set with an imbalance of 0.5±1.8 Sv. Based on this quantification, the global patterns of oceanic freshwater fluxes are described and a global mean is integrated to provide estimates of freshwater fluxes between basins. We find the Atlantic to be less evaporative and the Pacific less precipitative than previous in-situ estimates.
  • Thesis
    The production of temperature and salinity variance and covariance : implications for mixing
    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 2013-02) Schanze, Julian J.
    Large-scale thermal forcing and freshwater fluxes play an essential role in setting temperature and salinity in the ocean. A number of recent estimates of the global oceanic freshwater balance as well as the global oceanic surface net heat flux are used to investigate the effects of heat- and freshwater forcing at the ocean surface. Such forcing induces changes in both density and density-compensated temperature and salinity changes (’spice’). The ratio of the relative contributions of haline and thermal forcing in the mixed layer is maintained by large-scale surface fluxes, leading to important consequences for mixing in the ocean interior. In a stratified ocean, mixing processes can be either along lines of constant density (isopycnal) or across those lines (diapycnal). The contribution of these processes to the total mixing rate in the ocean can be estimated from the large-scale forcing by evaluating the production of thermal variance, salinity variance and temperature-salinity covariance. Here, I use new estimates of surface fluxes to evaluate these terms and combine them to generate estimates of the production of density and spice variance under the assumption of a linear equation of state. As a consequence, it is possible to estimate the relative importance of isopycnal and diapycnal mixing in the ocean. While isopycnal and diapycnal processes occur on very different length scales, I find that the surface-driven production of density and spice variance requires an approximate equipartition between isopycnal and diapycnal mixing in the ocean interior. In addition, consideration of the full nonlinear equation of state reveals that surface fluxes require an apparent buoyancy gain (expansion) of the ocean, which allows an estimate of the amount of contraction on mixing due to cabbeling in the ocean interior.
  • Article
    Novel and flexible approach to access the open ocean: Uses of sailing research vessel Lady Amber during SPURS-2.
    (Oceanography Society, 2019-06-14) Rainville, Luc ; Centurioni, Luca R. ; Asher, William E. ; Clayson, Carol A. ; Drushka, Kyla ; Edson, James B. ; Hodges, Benjamin A. ; Hormann, Verena ; Farrar, J. Thomas ; Schanze, Julian J. ; Shcherbina, Andrey Y.
    SPURS-2 (Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study 2) used the schooner Lady Amber, a small sailing research vessel, to deploy, service, maintain, and recover a variety of oceanographic and meteorological instruments in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Low operational costs allowed us to frequently deploy floats and drifters to collect data necessary for resolving the regional circulation of the eastern tropical Pacific. The small charter gave us the opportunity to deploy drifters in locations chosen according to current conditions, to recover and deploy various autonomous instruments in a targeted and adaptive manner, and to collect additional near-surface and atmospheric measurements in the remote SPURS-2 region.
  • Article
    SPURS-2: Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study 2. The eastern equatorial Pacific experiment.
    (Oceanography Society, 2019-06-14) Lindstrom, Eric ; Edson, James B. ; Schanze, Julian J. ; Shcherbina, Andrey Y.
    In this special issue of Oceanography we explore the results of SPURS-2, the second Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study (SPURS), conducted in the eastern equatorial Pacific. SPURS is an ambitious multiyear field program to study surface salinity in evaporation-​dominated (SPURS-1) and precipitation-dominated (SPURS-2) regions of the global ocean. The primary goal was to further our understanding of the global oceanic freshwater cycle through investigation of the physical processes controlling the upper-ocean salinity balance: air-sea interactions, transport, and mixing. With the advent of satellites capable of measuring sea surface salinity, such as NASA’s Aquarius instrument and the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite, as well as the European Space Agency’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) platform, a near-synoptic view of such processes has become possible (Figure 1). To take full advantage of such observations, we need to understand the link between upper-ocean dynamics and the oceanic freshwater cycle.
  • Article
    Estimates of cabbeling in the global ocean
    (American Meteorological Society, 2013-04) Schanze, Julian J. ; Schmitt, Raymond W.
    Owing to the larger thermal expansion coefficient at higher temperatures, more buoyancy is put into the ocean by heating than is removed by cooling at low temperatures. The authors show that, even with globally balanced thermal and haline surface forcing at the ocean surface, there is a negative density flux and hence a positive buoyancy flux. As shown by McDougall and Garrett, this must be compensated by interior densification on mixing due to the nonlinearity of the equation of state (cabbeling). Three issues that arise from this are addressed: the estimation of the annual input of density forcing, the effects of the seasonal cycle, and the total cabbeling potential of the ocean upon complete mixing. The annual expansion through surface density forcing in a steady-state ocean driven by balanced evaporation–precipitation–runoff (E–P–R) and net radiative budget at the surface Qnet is estimated as 74 000 m3 s−1 (0.07 Sv; 1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), which would be equivalent to a sea level rise of 6.3 mm yr−1. This is equivalent to approximately 3 times the estimated rate of sea level rise or 450% of the average Mississippi River discharge. When seasonal variations are included, this density forcing increases by 35% relative to the time-mean case to 101 000 m3 s−1 (0.1 Sv). Likely bounds are established on these numbers by using different Qnet and E–P–R datasets and the estimates are found to be robust to a factor of ~2. These values compare well with the cabbeling-induced contraction inferred from independent thermal dissipation rate estimates. The potential sea level decrease upon complete vertical mixing of the ocean is estimated as 230 mm. When horizontal mixing is included, the sea level drop is estimated as 300 mm.