Surface net heat flux estimated from drifter observations

Abstract

Abstract The ocean mixed layer temperature equation is used to estimate the surface net heat flux from drifter measurements. The net heat flux is determined for both the climatologic and tropical cyclone (TC) conditions. The spatial distributions of the drifter-derived heat fluxes under both the two conditions are similar to those derived from satellite observations. However, the drifter-derived climatologic heat flux appears to be weaker in magnitude than that derived from satellites, and performs better in closing the energy budget with a global mean value of 3.9 W m−2. The drifter-derived heat flux also performs better than the satellite-derived heat flux under TCs, using the buoy observations as a reference considering metrics such as the meen error, mean absolute error, root mean-square error and percent bias. The spatially averaged mean net heat flux derived from drifters under TCs is −124 W m−2 at 10° N, and decreases to −85 W m−2 at 30° N, however, these values are much larger than those obtained from satellites (−63 W m−2 and −21 W m−2, respectively). As additional components for the mixed layer temperature equation, both the entrainment velocity and eddy diffusivity in climatology show large amplitudes in regions with strong currents such as the Western Boundary Current and Antarctic Circumpolar Current. However, under TC conditions large values of the entrainment velocity and eddy diffusivity mostly appear in regions with strong winds.