Geosciences Dept. Seminar: Evaporation from the ocean: A new Lagrangian model and its application to observations

Abstract:

Though evaporation constitutes the largest contributor to the energy input into the atmosphere and is a major element in the hydrologic cycle on earth, currently, our ability to model and quantify it is meager. Two complementing approaches are routinely employed: Bulk formulae are used in GCMs and box models are employed to estimate thermohaline fluxes in a particular basin. In my talk I will present a new approach that yields an accurate estimation of a single newly proposed parameter, called Evaporation Length, that augments several parameters associated with net evaporation from the ocean. The Evaporation Length, can be straightforwardly  determined from various types of surface transects, including publicly accessible global salinity data archives and stable isotopes or salinity surface transects from particular cruises. The Evaporation Length clearly differentiates between various regions of the world ocean, being low in the hot, dry and slowly moving Red Sea water, extremely large in the fast moving Gulf Stream and having intermediate values in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. 

Seminar Organizer: Prof. Eyal Haifetz