Abstract
Air-sea flux variability has contributions from both ocean and
atmosphere at different spatio-temporal scales. Atmospheric synoptic
scales and the air-sea turbulent heat flux that they drive are well
represented in climate models, but ocean mesoscales and their associated
variability are often not well resolved due to non-eddy-resolving
spatial resolutions of current climate models. We deploy a physics-based
stochastic subgrid-scale parameterization for ocean density, that
reinforces the lateral density variations due to oceanic eddies, and
examine its effect on air-sea heat flux variability in a comprehensive
coupled climate model. The stochastic parameterization substantially
modifies sea surface temperature (SST) and latent heat flux (LHF)
variability and their co-variability, primarily at scales near the
resolution of the ocean model grid. Enhancement in the SST-LHF anomaly
covariance, and correlations, indicate that the ocean-intrinsic
component of the air-sea heat flux variability improves with respect to
high-resolution satellite observations, especially in Gulf Stream
region.