Modulation of Ocean Temperature Structure and Heat Content by Tropical Cyclones

The ocean temperature response to tropical cyclones (TCs) is important for TC development, local air–sea interactions, and the global air–sea heat budget and transport. As TCs and ocean temperature structures are changing in the recent decades, it is worthy to study their contribution on ocean heat uptake. The modulation of the upper ocean temperature structure after TCs were studied at the observation stations in the northern South China Sea. The upper ocean temperature and heat response to the TCs mainly depend on the combined effect of mixing and vertical advection. Mixing cooled the sea surface and warmed the subsurface, while upwelling (downwelling) reduced (increased) the subsurface warm anomaly and cooled (warmed) the deeper ocean. An ideal parameterization that depends on only the nondimensional mixing depth (HE), non-dimensional transition layer thickness (HT), and nondimensional upwelling depth (HU) was able to roughly reproduce sea surface temperature (SST) and upper ocean heat change. After TCs, the subsurface heat anomalies moved into the deeper ocean. The air–sea surface heat flux contributed little to the upper ocean temperature anomaly during the TC forcing stage and did not recover the surface ocean back to pre-TC conditions more than one and a half months after the TC. This work shows how upper ocean temperature and heat content varies by a TC, indicating that TC-induced mixing modulates the warm surface water into the subsurface, and TC-induced advection further modulates the warm water into the deeper ocean and influences the local and global ocean heat budget.