Meridional heat transport variability induced by mesoscale processes in the subpolar North Atlantic

© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 9 (2018): 1124, doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03134-x.The ocean’s role in global climate change largely depends on its heat transport. Therefore, understanding the oceanic meridional heat transport (MHT) variability is a fundamental issue. Prevailing observational and modeling evidence suggests that MHT variability is primarily determined by the large-scale ocean circulation. Here, using new in situ observations in the eastern subpolar North Atlantic Ocean and an eddy-resolving numerical model, we show that energetic mesoscale eddies with horizontal scales of about 10–100 km profoundly modulate MHT variability on time scales from intra-seasonal to interannual. Our results reveal that the velocity changes due to mesoscale processes produce substantial variability for the MHT regionally (within sub-basins) and the subpolar North Atlantic as a whole. The findings have important implications for understanding the mechanisms for poleward heat transport variability in the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean, a key region for heat and carbon sequestration, ice–ocean interaction, and biological productivity.J.Z. was financially supported by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at WHOI, with funding provided by the Ocean and Climate Change Institute. This work was also supported by the US National Science Foundation (OCE-1258823 and OCE-1634886), as well as by China’s national key research and development projects (2016YFA0601803), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41521091 and U1606402), the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (2015ASKJ01), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (201424001 and 201362048)