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Response of the mixed layer depth and subduction rate in the subtropical Northeast Pacific to global warming

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Abstract

The response of the mixed layer depth (MLD) and subduction rate in the subtropical Northeast Pacific to global warming is investigated based on 9 CMIP5 models. Compared with the present climate in the 9 models, the response of the MLD in the subtropical Northeast Pacific to the increased radiation forcing is spatially nonuniform, with the maximum shoaling about 50 m in the ensemble mean result. The inter-model differences of MLD change are non-negligible, which depend on the various dominated mechanisms. On the north of the MLD front, MLD shallows largely and is influenced by Ekman pumping, heat flux, and upper-ocean cold advection changes. On the south of the MLD front, MLD changes a little in the warmer climate, which is mainly due to the upper-ocean warm advection change. As a result, the MLD front intensity weakens obviously from 0.24 m/km to 0.15 m/km (about 33.9%) in the ensemble mean, not only due to the maximum of MLD shoaling but also dependent on the MLD non-uniform spatial variability. The spatially non-uniform decrease of the subduction rate is primarily dominated by the lateral induction reduction (about 85% in ensemble mean) due to the significant weakening of the MLD front. This research indicates that the ocean advection change impacts the MLD spatially non-uniform change greatly, and then plays an important role in the response of the MLD front and the subduction process to global warming.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modeling, which is responsible for CMIP5. We thank the climate modeling groups (as listed in Table 1) for producing and making available their model output.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China

    Ruibin Xia

  2. MNR Key Laboratory for Polar Science, Po1ar Research Institute of China, Ministry of Natural Resources, Shanghai, 200136, China

    Ruibin Xia & Bingrui Li

  3. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai, 519080, China

    Chen Cheng

Authors
  1. Ruibin Xia
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  2. Bingrui Li
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  3. Chen Cheng
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Correspondence to Ruibin Xia.

Additional information

Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract No. 41606217; the Open Fund of the Key Laboratory of Research on Marine Hazards Forecasting under contract No. LOMF1702; the Open Fund of Key Laboratory for Polar Science, Polar Research Institute of China, Ministry of Natural Resources under contract No. KP201702; the Open Fund of the Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves, Chinese Academy of Sciences under contract No. KLOCW1903; the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province under contract No. BK20191405.

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Xia, R., Li, B. & Cheng, C. Response of the mixed layer depth and subduction rate in the subtropical Northeast Pacific to global warming. Acta Oceanol. Sin. 40, 1–9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-021-1818-y

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