A Dynamics-Weighted Principal Components Analysis of Dominant Atmospheric Drivers of Ocean Variability with an Application to the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes a framework for identifying dominant atmospheric drivers of ocean variability. The method combines statistics of atmosphere–ocean fluxes with physics from an ocean general circulation model to derive atmospheric patterns optimized to excite variability in a specified ocean quantity of interest. We first derive the method as a weighted principal components analysis and illustrate its capabilities in a toy problem. Next, we apply our analysis to the problem of interannual upper ocean heat content (HC) variability in the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre (SPG) using the adjoint of the MITgcm and atmosphere–ocean fluxes from the ECCOv4-r4 state estimate. An unweighted principal components analysis reveals that North Atlantic heat and momentum fluxes in ECCOv4-r4 have a range of spatiotemporal patterns. By contrast, dynamics-weighted principal components analysis collapses the space of these patterns onto a small subset—principally associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation—that dominates interannual SPG HC variance. By perturbing the ECCOv4-r4 state estimate, we illustrate the pathways along which variability propagates from the atmosphere to the ocean in a nonlinear ocean model. This technique is applicable across a range of problems across Earth system components, including in the absence of a model adjoint. Significance Statement While the oceans have absorbed 90% of the excess heat associated with human-forced climate change, the change in the ocean’s heat content is not steady, with peaks and troughs superimposed upon a general increase. These fluctuations come from chaotic changes in the atmosphere and ocean and can be hard to disentangle. We use this case of ocean heat content variability to introduce a new method for determining the patterns of weather and climate in the atmosphere that are most effective at generating fluctuations in the ocean. To do this, we combine the statistics of recent atmospheric activity with output from a state-of-the-art numerical ocean model that reveals physical processes driving changes in ocean quantities including ocean heat content. This approach suggests that the atmospheric patterns that stimulate the most energetic changes in ocean heat content in the northern North Atlantic are not necessarily the most energetic patterns present in the atmosphere. We test our findings by preventing these patterns from affecting the ocean in our numerical model and measure a strong reduction in ocean heat content fluctuations.