Effects of fluctuating daily surface fluxes on the time-mean oceanic circulation

The effect of fluctuating daily surface fluxes on the time-mean oceanic circulation is studied using an empirical flux model. The model produces fluctuating fluxes resulting from atmospheric variability and includes oceanic feedbacks on the fluxes. Numerical experiments were carried out by driving an ocean general circulation model with three different versions of the empirical model. It is found that fluctuating daily fluxes lead to an increase in the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) of the Atlantic of about 1 Sv and a decrease in the Antarctic circumpolar current (ACC) of about 32 Sv. The changes are approximately 7% of the MOC and 16% of the ACC obtained without fluctuating daily fluxes. The fluctuating fluxes change the intensity and the depth of vertical mixing. This, in turn, changes the density field and thus the circulation. Fluctuating buoyancy fluxes change the vertical mixing in a non-linear way: they tend to increase the convective mixing in mostly stable regions and to decrease the convective mixing in mostly unstable regions. The ACC changes are related to the enhanced mixing in the subtropical and the mid-latitude Southern Ocean and reduced mixing in the high-latitude Southern Ocean. The enhanced mixing is related to an increase in the frequency and the depth of convective events. As these events bring more dense water downward, the mixing changes lead to a reduction in meridional gradient of the depth-integrated density in the Southern Ocean and hence the strength of the ACC. The MOC changes are related to more subtle density changes. It is found that the vertical mixing in a latitudinal strip in the northern North Atlantic is more strongly enhanced due to fluctuating fluxes than the mixing in a latitudinal strip in the South Atlantic. This leads to an increase in the density difference between the two strips, which can be responsible for the increase in the Atlantic MOC

Air–sea fluxes in a climate model using hourly coupling between the atmospheric and the oceanic components

We analyse the changes in the air–sea fluxes of momentum, heat and fresh water flux caused by increasing the ocean–atmosphere coupling frequency from once per day to once per hour in the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model. We diagnose the relative influences of daily averaging and high-frequency feedbacks on the basic statistics of the air–sea fluxes at grid point level and quantify feedback modes responsible for large scale changes in fluxes over the Southern Ocean and the Equatorial Pacific. Coupling once per hour instead of once per day reduces the mean of the momentum-flux magnitude by up to 7 % in the tropics and increases it by up to 10 % in the Southern Ocean. These changes result solely from feedbacks between atmosphere and ocean occurring on time scales shorter than 1 day. The variance and extremes of all the fluxes are increased in most parts of the oceans. Exceptions are found for the momentum and fresh water fluxes in the tropics. The increases result mainly from the daily averaging, while the decreases in the tropics are caused by the high-frequency feedbacks. The variance increases are substantial, reaching up to 50 % for the momentum flux, 100 % for the fresh water flux, and a factor of 15 for the net heat flux. These diurnal and intra-diurnal variations account for up to 50–90 % of the total variances and exhibit distinct seasonality. The high-frequency coupling can influence the large-scale feedback modes that lead to large-scale changes in the magnitude of wind stress over the Southern Ocean and Equatorial Pacific. In the Southern Ocean, the dependence of the SST-wind-stress feedback on the mean state of SST, which is colder in the experiment with hourly coupling than in the experiment with daily coupling, leads to an increase of westerlies. In the Equatorial Pacific, Bjerknes feedback in the hourly coupled experiment reveals a diurnal cycle during the El Niño events, with the feedback being stronger in the nighttime than in the daytime and no clear diurnal cycle during the La Niña events. This asymmetry might lead to the decrease of wind stress in the Equatorial Pacific in the hourly coupled experiment. © 2016 The Author(s

Stochastic Parameterization Toward a New View of Weather and Climate Models

Peer reviewe

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field

M2 Internal-Tide Generation in STORMTIDE2

Internal-tide generation has been quantified using both pressure work and energy conversion. When calculating the pressure work from simulated or observed data, the internal-tide pressure has to be decomposed from the full pressure, for which various options exist. We show that the conversion, that has to be derived from the depth-integrated energy equations, contains the work done by both the form drag at the bottom and that at the surface, with the latter being about 1% of the former. For calculating the pressure work, the internal-tide pressure identified as the deviation from the depth-averaged pressure perturbation has to be used. We analyzed the work done by the bottom form drag in STORMTIDE2, a concurrent simulation of circulations and tides. As expected, the identified internal-tide pressure reveals the characteristic pressure drop from the windward to the leeward side of an obstacle. The M2 internal-tide generation in STORMTIDE2 is more strongly controlled by the barotropic tide than by the topographic slope, partly because the tidal velocity can change up to one order of magnitude from the top to the foot of a high ridge within a short distance, a feature only produced by a high-resolution model. Consequently, the intense generation maps the immediate proximities of the summits of high ridges, making the global generation to be strongest near 1,200 m and decreasing drastically below 3,000 m. The depth structure of the generation differs in different basins, which could impact differently on circulations in different basins