Using a 1-D model to reproduce the diurnal variability of SST

Abstract

A wide range of applications, from air-sea interaction studies to fisheries and biological modeling, need accurate, high resolution SST which requires that the diurnal signal is known; for many applications, diurnal estimates are necessary and should be included in blended SST products. A widely preferred approach to bridge the gap between in situ and remotely sensed measurements and obtain diurnal warming estimates at large spatial scales is modeling of the upper ocean temperature. This study uses the one-dimensional General Ocean Turbulence Model (GOTM) to resolve diurnal signals identified from satellite SSTs and in situ measurements. Focus is given on testing and validation of different parameterizations of the basic physical processes known to influence the generation of a warm surface layer. GOTM is tested and validated using in situ measurements obtained at three locations, two in the Atlantic Ocean and one in the Baltic Sea, where different oceanographic and atmospheric conditions occur, in order to obtain an insight into its general performance. It is found that the model, with a 9 band solar absorption model rather than the standard 2 band scheme, performs well when using 3 hourly NWP forcing fields and is able to resolve daily SST variability seen both from satellite and in situ measurements. As such, and due to its low computational cost, it is proposed as a candidate model for diurnal variability estimates.