Petrick, Christof, Dobslaw, H., Bergmann-Wolf, I., Schön, N., Matthes, Katja and Thomas, M. (2014) Low-frequency ocean bottom pressure variations in the North Pacific in response to time-variable surface winds. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 119 (8). pp. 5190-5202. DOI 10.1002/2013JC009635.

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Abstract

One decade of time-variable gravity field observations from the GRACE satellite mission reveals low-frequency ocean bottom pressure (OBP) variability of up to 2.5 hPa centered at the northern flank of the subtropical gyre in the North Pacific. From a 145 year-long simulation with a coupled chemistry climate model, OBP variability is found to be related to the prevailing atmospheric sea-level pressure and surface wind conditions in the larger North Pacific area. The dominating atmospheric pressure patterns obtained from the climate model run allow in combination with ERA-Interim sea-level pressure and surface winds a reconstruction of the OBP variability in the North Pacific from atmospheric model data only, which correlates favorably (r=0.7) with GRACE ocean bottom pressure observations. The regression results indicate that GRACE-based OBP observations are indeed sensitive to changes in the prevailing sea-level pressure and thus surface wind conditions in the North Pacific, thereby opening opportunities to constrain atmospheric models from satellite gravity observations over the oceans.

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