Simulation of sea surface temperatures with the surface heat fluxes from an atmospheric circulation model

The global fields of the surface heat fluxes for the December-February period are calculated with the UCLA atmospheric circulation model (ACM). For several locations in the north Atlantic, the model heat fluxes are incorporated into the forcing of a simple ocean mixed-layer (OML) model. The OML-model uses a slight generalization of the bulk Kraus-Turner concepts incorporating thermocline contributions to the buoyancy budget of the upper ocean. The remaining components of the OML-forcing are estimated from weather-ship data. -from Authors