An international group of scientists has discovered the first direct evidence of a link between seemingly random weather systems in the ocean and climate on a global scale. The team, led by Hussain Aloui, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Rochester and a research assistant in the university’s Laser Energy Laboratory, reported their findings as follows: Science Developments.

Lead author Benjamin Storer, a research fellow in the Allui Turbulence and Complex Flows Group, says weather in the ocean is similar to what we experience on land, but on different time and length scales. Weather patterns over land can last for several days and are approximately 500 kilometers wide; Ocean weather patterns such as eddies last three to four weeks but are about one-fifth the size.

The connection of ocean movements with climate

“Scientists have long assumed that these ubiquitous and seemingly random movements in the ocean interact with climate on a large scale, but this has always been elusive because it has not been clear how to unravel this complex system to measure their interactions,” Alouis said. says. “We have developed a framework that can do this. “What we found was not what people expected because it requires mediation of the atmosphere.”

The group’s goal was to understand how energy moves through different channels in the oceans around the planet. They used a mathematical method developed by Alouis in 2019 and later implemented in code improved by Storer and Alouis; This allowed them to study energy transfer in different circuits up to 10 kilometers around the Earth. These methods were then applied to ocean datasets obtained from an advanced climate model and satellite observations.

Conclusions and implications

The study found that ocean weather systems both strengthen and weaken as they interact with climate scales and in a pattern that reflects global atmospheric circulation. The researchers also found that an atmospheric band called the “intertropical convergence zone” near the equator, which produces 30 percent of global precipitation, causes intense energy transfer and creates ocean turbulence.

Studying such complex fluid motions at different scales is not easy, Storer and Alui say, but it has advantages over previous attempts to link weather to climate change. They believe the team’s work provides a promising framework for better understanding the climate system.

“There is great interest in how global warming and changes in our climate affect extreme weather events,” says Alluet. “Often such research efforts rely on statistical analysis, which requires big data to provide confidence in uncertainty. We take a different approach based on mechanistic analysis, which alleviates some of these requirements and allows us to more easily understand cause and effect.”