Surface heat fluxes during hot events

Abstract

We selected surface flux datasets to investigate the heat fluxes during “hot events”; (HEs), defined as short-term, large-scale phenomena involving very high sea surface temperature (SST). Validation of the heat fluxes against in-situ ones, which are estimated from in-situ observation in HE sampling conditions, shows the accuracies (bias ± RMS error) of net shortwave radiation, net long wave radiation, latent heat and sensible heat fluxes are 20 ± 45.0 W m⁻², −9 ± 12.3 W m⁻², −2.3 ± 31.5 W m⁻² and 1.5 ± 5.0 W m⁻², respectively. Statistical analyses of HEs show that, during these events, net solar radiation remains high and then decreases from 246 to 220 W m⁻², while latent heat is low and then increases from 100 W m⁻² to 124 W m⁻². Histogram peaks indicate net solar radiation of 270 W m⁻² and latent heat flux of 90 W m⁻² during HEs. Further, HEs are shown to evolve in three phases: formation, mature, and ending phases. Mean heat gain (HG) in the HE formation phase of 60 W m⁻² is larger than the reasonably estimated annual mean HG range of 0–25 W m⁻² in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool. Such large daily HG in the HE formation phase can be expected to increase SSTs and produce large amplitudes of diurnal SST variations during HEs, which have been observed by both satellite and in-situ measurements in our previous studies.