Super Residual Circulation: a new perspective on ocean vertical heat transport

Ocean circulation and mixing regulate Earth’s climate by moving heat vertically within the ocean. We present a new formalism to diagnose the role of ocean circulation and diabatic processes in setting vertical heat transport in ocean models. In this formalism we use temperature tendencies, rather than explicit vertical velocities, to diagnose circulation. Using quasi-steady-state simulations from the Australian Community Climate and Earth-System Simulator Ocean Model (ACCESS-OM2), we diagnose a diathermal overturning circulation in temperature–depth space. Furthermore, projection of tendencies due to diabatic processes onto this coordinate permits us to represent these as apparent overturning circulations. Our framework permits us to extend the concept of “Super Residual Transport,” which combines mean and eddy advection terms with subgridscale isopycnal mixing due to mesoscale eddies but excludes small-scale three-dimensional turbulent mixing effect, to construct a new overturning circulation—the “Super Residual Circulation” (SRC). We find that in the coarse-resolution version of ACCESS-OM2 (nominally 1° horizontal resolution) the SRC is dominated by an ~11-Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) circulation that transports heat upward. The SRC’s upward heat transport is ~2 times as large in a finer-horizontal-resolution (0.1°) version of ACCESS, suggesting that a differing balance of super-residual and parameterized small-scale processes may emerge as eddies are resolved. Our analysis adds new insight into superresidual processes, because the SRC elucidates the pathways in temperature and depth space along which water mass transformation occurs.