Surface Heat Fluxes in the Western Equatorial Pacific Ocean Estimated by Bulk Parameterization and by an Inverse Mixed Layer Model

Abstract

Sea surface heat fluxes in the western equatorial Pacific Ocean estimated by bulk parameterization are compared with fluxes computed with a one-dimensional, level 2.5 turbulence closure inverse mixed layer model. The bulk parameterization method requires the inputs of sea surface temperature, cloud amount, wind speed, air temperature, and specific humidity. With the inverse mixed layer model, the authors estimate the surface net heat flux using surface wind stresses and sea surface temperature (SST) as input, assuming a linear variation of surface heat fluxes between two time intervals of known SST in a secant root-finding algorithm. The meteorological data time series from the Woods Hole Oceanography Institution buoy at 1°45?S, 156°E during the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean?Atmosphere Response Experiment intensive observation period is used as the test dataset. The inverse method generates large variations in daily mean heat flux estimation while the derived longer time-averaged net heat flux is more consistent with the bulk formula result. This can be explained by an experiment that shows that the heat flux is highly sensitive to relatively small SST errors in the input. The use of satellite data is also discussed by testing the model with a blended SST input composed of satellite- observed and mooring-measured SST.