Gordon Arnold L.

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Arnold L.

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Transport and dynamics of the Panay Sill overflow in the Philippine Seas

(American Meteorological Society, 2010-12) Tessler, Zachary D. ; Gordon, Arnold L. ; Pratt, Lawrence J. ; Sprintall, Janet

Observations of stratification and currents between June 2007 and March 2009 reveal a strong overflow between 400- and 570-m depth from the Panay Strait into the Sulu Sea. The overflow water is derived from approximately 400 m deep in the South China Sea. Temporal mean velocity is greater than 0.75 m s−1 at 50 m above the 570-m Panay Sill. Empirical orthogonal function analysis of a mooring time series shows that the flow is dominated by the bottom overflow current with little seasonal variance. The overflow does not descend below 1250 m in the Sulu Sea but rather settles above high-salinity deep water derived from the Sulawesi Sea. The mean observed overflow transport at the sill is 0.32 × 106 m3 s−1. The observed transport was used to calculate a bulk diapycnal diffusivity of 4.4 × 10−4 m2 s−1 within the Sulu Sea slab (575–1250 m) ventilated from Panay Strait. Analysis of Froude number variation across the sill shows that the flow is hydraulically controlled. A suitable hydraulic control model shows overflow transport equivalent to the observed overflow. Thorpe-scale estimates show turbulent dissipation rates up to 5 × 10−7 W kg−1 just downstream of the supercritical to subcritical flow transition, suggesting a hydraulic jump downstream of the sill.
Chaotic advection in an archipelago

(American Meteorological Society, 2010-09) Rypina, Irina I. ; Pratt, Lawrence J. ; Pullen, Julie ; Levin, Julia C. ; Gordon, Arnold L.

Techniques from dynamical systems theory have been applied to study horizontal stirring of fluid in the Philippine Archipelago. The authors’ analysis is based on velocity fields produced by two high-resolution (3 and 6 km) numerical models. Particular attention is paid to identifying robust surface flow patterns and associating them with dominant Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs). A recurrent wind-driven dipole in the lee of the coastline is considered in detail. The associated LCSs form a template for stirring, exchange, and biological transport in and around the dipole. Chaotic advection is argued to provide a relevant framework for interpreting mesoscale horizontal stirring processes in an archipelago as a whole. Implications for the formation of filaments, the production of tracer variance, and the scale at which stirring leads to mixing are discussed in connection with an observed temperature record.
From salty to fresh—salinity processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study-2 (SPURS-2) : diagnosing the physics of a rainfall-dominated salinity minimum

(The Oceanography Society, 2015-03) Schmitt, Raymond W. ; Asher, William E. ; Bingham, Frederick ; Carton, James A. ; Centurioni, Luca R. ; Farrar, J. Thomas ; Gordon, Arnold L. ; Hodges, Benjamin A. ; Jessup, Andrew T. ; Kessler, William S. ; Rainville, Luc ; Shcherbina, Andrey Y.

One of the notable features of the global ocean is that the salinity of the North Atlantic is about 1 psu higher than that of the North Pacific. This contrast is thought to be due to one of the large asymmetries in the global water cycle: the transport of water vapor by the trade winds across Central America and the lack of any comparable transport into the Atlantic from the Sahara Desert. Net evaporation serves to maintain high Atlantic salinities, and net precipitation lowers those in the Pacific. Because the effects on upper-ocean physics are markedly different in the evaporating and precipitating regimes, the next phase of research in the Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study (SPURS) must address a high rainfall region. It seemed especially appropriate to focus on the eastern tropical Pacific that is freshened by the water vapor carried from the Atlantic. In a sense, the SPURS-2 Pacific region will be looking at the downstream fate of the freshwater carried out of the SPURS-1 North Atlantic region. Rainfall tends to lower surface density and thus inhibit vertical mixing, leading to quite different physical structure and dynamics in the upper ocean. Here, we discuss the motivations for the location of SPURS-2 and the scientific questions we hope to address.
Improving oceanic overflow representation in climate models : the Gravity Current Entrainment Climate Process Team

(American Meteorological Society, 2009-05) Legg, Sonya ; Ezer, Tal ; Jackson, Laura ; Briegleb, Bruce P. ; Danabasoglu, Gokhan ; Large, William G. ; Wu, Wanli ; Chang, Yeon ; Ozgokmen, Tamay M. ; Peters, Hartmut ; Xu, Xiaobiao ; Chassignet, Eric P. ; Gordon, Arnold L. ; Griffies, Stephen M. ; Hallberg, Robert ; Price, James F. ; Riemenschneider, Ulrike ; Yang, Jiayan

Oceanic overflows are bottom-trapped density currents originating in semienclosed basins, such as the Nordic seas, or on continental shelves, such as the Antarctic shelf. Overflows are the source of most of the abyssal waters, and therefore play an important role in the large-scale ocean circulation, forming a component of the sinking branch of the thermohaline circulation. As they descend the continental slope, overflows mix vigorously with the surrounding oceanic waters, changing their density and transport significantly. These mixing processes occur on spatial scales well below the resolution of ocean climate models, with the result that deep waters and deep western boundary currents are simulated poorly. The Gravity Current Entrainment Climate Process Team was established by the U.S. Climate Variability and Prediction (CLIVAR) Program to accelerate the development and implementation of improved representations of overflows within large-scale climate models, bringing together climate model developers with those conducting observational, numerical, and laboratory process studies of overflows. Here, the organization of the Climate Process Team is described, and a few of the successes and lessons learned during this collaboration are highlighted, with some emphasis on the well-observed Mediterranean overflow. The Climate Process Team has developed several different overflow parameterizations, which are examined in a hierarchy of ocean models, from comparatively well-resolved regional models to the largest-scale global climate models.
Bay of Bengal : 2013 northeast monsoon upper-ocean circulation

(The Oceanography Society, 2016-06) Gordon, Arnold L. ; Shroyer, Emily L. ; Mahadevan, Amala ; Sengupta, Debasis ; Freilich, Mara

The upper 200 m of the two northern Indian Ocean embayments, the Bay of Bengal (BoB) and the Arabian Sea (AS), differ sharply in their salinity stratification, as the Asian monsoon injects massive amounts of freshwater into the BoB while removing freshwater via evaporation from the AS. The ocean circulation transfers salt from the AS to the BoB and exports freshwater from the BoB to mitigate the salinity difference and reach a quasi-steady state, albeit with strong seasonality. An energetic field of mesoscale features and an intrathermocline eddy was observed within the BoB during the R/V Revelle November and December 2013 Air-Sea Interactions Regional Initiative cruises, marking the early northeast monsoon phase. Mesoscale features, which display a surprisingly large thermohaline range within their confines, obscure the regional surface water and thermohaline stratification patterns, as observed by satellite and Argo profilers. Ocean processes blend the fresh and salty features along and across density surfaces, influencing sea surface temperature and air-sea flux. Comparing the Revelle observations to the Argo data reveals a general westward migration of mesoscale features across the BoB.
The Kuroshio and Luzon Undercurrent east of Luzon Island

(The Oceanography Society, 2015-12) Lien, Ren-Chieh ; Ma, Barry ; Lee, Craig M. ; Sanford, Thomas B. ; Mensah, Vigan ; Centurioni, Luca R. ; Cornuelle, Bruce D. ; Gopalakrishnan, Ganesh ; Gordon, Arnold L. ; Chang, Ming-Huei ; Jayne, Steven R. ; Yang, Yiing-Jang

Current structure, transport, and water mass properties of the northward-flowing Kuroshio and the southward-flowing Luzon Undercurrent (LU) were observed for nearly one year, June 8, 2012–June 4, 2013, across the Kuroshio path at 18.75°N. Observations were made from four platforms: an array of six subsurface ADCP moorings, two Seagliders, fivepressure inverted echo sounders (PIES), and five horizontal electric field (HEF) sensors, providing the most detailed time series of the Kuroshio and Luzon Undercurrent water properties to date. Ocean state estimates of the western boundary current system were performed using the MIT general circulation model—four-dimensional variational assimilation (MITgcm-4D-Var) system. Prominent Kuroshio features from observations are simulated well by the numerical model. Annual mean Kuroshio transport, averaged over all platforms, is ~16 Sv with a standard deviation ~4 Sv. Kuroshio and LU transports and water mass pathways east of Luzon are revealed by Seaglider measurements. In a layer above the salinity maximum associated with North Pacific Tropical Water (NPTW), Kuroshio transport is ~7 Sv and contains North Equatorial Current (NEC) and Western Philippine Sea (WPS) waters, with an insignificant amount of South China Sea water on the shallow western flank. In an intermediate layer containing the core of the NPTW, Kuroshio transport is ~10 Sv, consisting mostly of NEC water. In the lower layer of the Kuroshio, transport is ~1.5 Sv of mostly North Pacific Intermediate Water (NPIW) as a part of WPS waters. Annual mean Luzon Undercurrent southward transport integrated to 1,000 m depth is ~2.7 Sv with a standard deviation ~2 Sv, carrying solely WPS waters below the salinity minimum of the NPIW. The transport of the western boundary current integrated over the full ocean depth east of Luzon Island is ~14 ± 4.5 Sv. Sources of the water masses in the Kuroshio and Luzon Undercurrent are confirmed qualitatively by the numerical model.
ASIRI : an ocean–atmosphere initiative for Bay of Bengal

(American Meteorological Society, 2016-11-22) Wijesekera, Hemantha W. ; Shroyer, Emily L. ; Tandon, Amit ; Ravichandran, M. ; Sengupta, Debasis ; Jinadasa, S. U. P. ; Fernando, Harindra J. S. ; Agrawal, Neeraj ; Arulananthan, India K. ; Bhat, G. S. ; Baumgartner, Mark F. ; Buckley, Jared ; Centurioni, Luca R. ; Conry, Patrick ; Farrar, J. Thomas ; Gordon, Arnold L. ; Hormann, Verena ; Jarosz, Ewa ; Jensen, Tommy G. ; Johnston, T. M. Shaun ; Lankhorst, Matthias ; Lee, Craig M. ; Leo, Laura S. ; Lozovatsky, Iossif ; Lucas, Andrew J. ; MacKinnon, Jennifer A. ; Mahadevan, Amala ; Nash, Jonathan D. ; Omand, Melissa M. ; Pham, Hieu ; Pinkel, Robert ; Rainville, Luc ; Ramachandran, Sanjiv ; Rudnick, Daniel L. ; Sarkar, Sutanu ; Send, Uwe ; Sharma, Rashmi ; Simmons, Harper L. ; Stafford, Kathleen M. ; St. Laurent, Louis C. ; Venayagamoorthy, Subhas K. ; Venkatesan, Ramasamy ; Teague, William J. ; Wang, David W. ; Waterhouse, Amy F. ; Weller, Robert A. ; Whalen, Caitlin B.

Air–Sea Interactions in the Northern Indian Ocean (ASIRI) is an international research effort (2013–17) aimed at understanding and quantifying coupled atmosphere–ocean dynamics of the Bay of Bengal (BoB) with relevance to Indian Ocean monsoons. Working collaboratively, more than 20 research institutions are acquiring field observations coupled with operational and high-resolution models to address scientific issues that have stymied the monsoon predictability. ASIRI combines new and mature observational technologies to resolve submesoscale to regional-scale currents and hydrophysical fields. These data reveal BoB’s sharp frontal features, submesoscale variability, low-salinity lenses and filaments, and shallow mixed layers, with relatively weak turbulent mixing. Observed physical features include energetic high-frequency internal waves in the southern BoB, energetic mesoscale and submesoscale features including an intrathermocline eddy in the central BoB, and a high-resolution view of the exchange along the periphery of Sri Lanka, which includes the 100-km-wide East India Coastal Current (EICC) carrying low-salinity water out of the BoB and an adjacent, broad northward flow (∼300 km wide) that carries high-salinity water into BoB during the northeast monsoon. Atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) observations during the decaying phase of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) permit the study of multiscale atmospheric processes associated with non-MJO phenomena and their impacts on the marine boundary layer. Underway analyses that integrate observations and numerical simulations shed light on how air–sea interactions control the ABL and upper-ocean processes.
Northern Arabian Sea Circulation-Autonomous Research (NASCar) : a research initiative based on autonomous sensors

(Oceanography Society, 2017-06) Centurioni, Luca R. ; Hormann, Verena ; Talley, Lynne D. ; Arzeno, Isabella B. ; Beal, Lisa M. ; Caruso, Michael J. ; Conry, Patrick ; Echols, Rosalind ; Fernando, Harindra J. S. ; Giddings, Sarah N. ; Gordon, Arnold L. ; Graber, Hans C. ; Harcourt, Ramsey R. ; Jayne, Steven R. ; Jensen, Tommy G. ; Lee, Craig M. ; Lermusiaux, Pierre F. J. ; L’Hegaret, Pierre ; Lucas, Andrew J. ; Mahadevan, Amala ; McClean, Julie L. ; Pawlak, Geno ; Rainville, Luc ; Riser, Stephen C. ; Seo, Hyodae ; Shcherbina, Andrey Y. ; Skyllingstad, Eric D. ; Sprintall, Janet ; Subrahmanyam, Bulusu ; Terrill, Eric ; Todd, Robert E. ; Trott, Corinne ; Ulloa, Hugo N. ; Wang, He

The Arabian Sea circulation is forced by strong monsoonal winds and is characterized by vigorous seasonally reversing currents, extreme differences in sea surface salinity, localized substantial upwelling, and widespread submesoscale thermohaline structures. Its complicated sea surface temperature patterns are important for the onset and evolution of the Asian monsoon. This article describes a program that aims to elucidate the role of upper-ocean processes and atmospheric feedbacks in setting the sea surface temperature properties of the region. The wide range of spatial and temporal scales and the difficulty of accessing much of the region with ships due to piracy motivated a novel approach based on state-of-the-art autonomous ocean sensors and platforms. The extensive data set that is being collected, combined with numerical models and remote sensing data, confirms the role of planetary waves in the reversal of the Somali Current system. These data also document the fast response of the upper equatorial ocean to monsoon winds through changes in temperature and salinity and the connectivity of the surface currents across the northern Indian Ocean. New observations of thermohaline interleaving structures and mixing in setting the surface temperature properties of the northern Arabian Sea are also discussed.
Bay of Bengal intraseasonal oscillations and the 2018 monsoon onset

(American Meteorological Society, 2021-10-01) Shroyer, Emily L. ; Tandon, Amit ; Sengupta, Debasis ; Fernando, Harindra J. S. ; Lucas, Andrew J. ; Farrar, J. Thomas ; Chattopadhyay, Rajib ; de Szoeke, Simon P. ; Flatau, Maria ; Rydbeck, Adam ; Wijesekera, Hemantha W. ; McPhaden, Michael J. ; Seo, Hyodae ; Subramanian, Aneesh C. ; Venkatesan, Ramasamy ; Joseph, Jossia K. ; Ramsundaram, S. ; Gordon, Arnold L. ; Bohman, Shannon M. ; Pérez, Jaynise ; Simoes-Sousa, Iury T. ; Jayne, Steven R. ; Todd, Robert E. ; Bhat, G. S. ; Lankhorst, Matthias ; Schlosser, Tamara L. ; Adams, Katherine ; Jinadasa, S. U. P. ; Mathur, Manikandan ; Mohapatra, Mrutyunjay ; Pattabhi Rama Rao, Eluri ; Sahai, Atul Kumar ; Sharma, Rashmi ; Lee, Craig ; Rainville, Luc ; Cherian, Deepak A. ; Cullen, Kerstin ; Centurioni, Luca R. ; Hormann, Verena ; MacKinnon, Jennifer A. ; Send, Uwe ; Anutaliya, Arachaporn ; Waterhouse, Amy F. ; Black, Garrett S. ; Dehart, Jeremy A. ; Woods, Kaitlyn M. ; Creegan, Edward ; Levy, Gad ; Kantha, Lakshmi ; Subrahmanyam, Bulusu

In the Bay of Bengal, the warm, dry boreal spring concludes with the onset of the summer monsoon and accompanying southwesterly winds, heavy rains, and variable air–sea fluxes. Here, we summarize the 2018 monsoon onset using observations collected through the multinational Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations in the Bay of Bengal (MISO-BoB) program between the United States, India, and Sri Lanka. MISO-BoB aims to improve understanding of monsoon intraseasonal variability, and the 2018 field effort captured the coupled air–sea response during a transition from active-to-break conditions in the central BoB. The active phase of the ∼20-day research cruise was characterized by warm sea surface temperature (SST > 30°C), cold atmospheric outflows with intermittent heavy rainfall, and increasing winds (from 2 to 15 m s−1). Accumulated rainfall exceeded 200 mm with 90% of precipitation occurring during the first week. The following break period was both dry and clear, with persistent 10–12 m s−1 wind and evaporation of 0.2 mm h−1. The evolving environmental state included a deepening ocean mixed layer (from ∼20 to 50 m), cooling SST (by ∼1°C), and warming/drying of the lower to midtroposphere. Local atmospheric development was consistent with phasing of the large-scale intraseasonal oscillation. The upper ocean stores significant heat in the BoB, enough to maintain SST above 29°C despite cooling by surface fluxes and ocean mixing. Comparison with reanalysis indicates biases in air–sea fluxes, which may be related to overly cool prescribed SST. Resolution of such biases offers a path toward improved forecasting of transition periods in the monsoon.

Gordon Arnold L.

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