Surface Flux Observations on the Southeastern Tropical Pacific Ocean and Attribution of SST Errors in Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Models

Open link

Publication date

August 2010

DOI

10.1175/2010JCLI3411.1

Publisher

American Meteorological Society

ISSN

0894-8755

Abstract

A new dataset synthesizes in situ and remote sensing observations from research ships deployed to the southeastern tropical Pacific stratocumulus region for 7 years in boreal fall. Surface meteorology, turbulent and radiative fluxes, aerosols, cloud properties, and rawinsonde profiles were measured on nine ship transects along 20°S from 75° to 85°W. Fluxes at the ocean surface are essential to the equilibrium SST. Solar radiation is the only warming net heat flux, with 180–200 W m⁻² in boreal fall. The strongest cooling is evaporation (60–100 W m⁻²), followed by net thermal infrared radiation (30 W m⁻²) and sensible heat flux (<10 W m⁻²). The 70 W m⁻² imbalance of heating at the surface reflects the seasonal SST tendency and some 30 W m⁻² c...