We’re very happy to welcome Matthew Patterson from the University of Oxford to give a seminar on Tuesday, 27th February.

Disentangling North Atlantic ocean-atmosphere coupling

The coupled nature of the ocean-atmosphere system frequently makes understanding the direction of causality difficult in ocean-atmosphere interactions. The primary means by which the ocean and atmosphere interact is via turbulent heat fluxes (i.e. the sum of latent and sensible heat fluxes) which are affected by factors such as the wind speed and air-sea temperature difference.  I will present a method to decompose turbulent heat fluxes into a component which is directly forced by atmospheric circulation, and a residual which is assumed to be primarily ‘ocean-forced’. I will apply the decomposition to a long pre-industrial control and show that the method distinguishes between regions dominated by ocean variability, such as the Gulf Stream, and regions more strongly driven by atmospheric variability, such as the Labrador Sea. I will examine leading modes of ocean variability identified by the decomposition and highlight any responses of atmospheric circulation to these modes.