Mechanisms driving mesoscale latent heat flux variations and mixed layer heat content evaluation in the Northwest Tropical Atlantic

Fernández, Pablo; Speich, Sabrina; Lapeyre, Guillaume; Pasquero, Claudia; Conejero, Carlos; Renault, Lionel; Desbiolles, Fabien

doi:10.5194/os-22-699-2026

Articles | Volume 22, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-22-699-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-22-699-2026

© Author(s) 2026. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 1

Research article

|

18 Feb 2026

Research article |

| 18 Feb 2026

Mechanisms driving mesoscale latent heat flux variations and mixed layer heat content evaluation in the Northwest Tropical Atlantic

Pablo Fernández, Sabrina Speich, Guillaume Lapeyre, Claudia Pasquero, Carlos Conejero, Lionel Renault, and Fabien Desbiolles

Data sets

SeaFlux Data Products V3 J. B. Roberts et al. https://doi.org/10.5067/SEAFLUX/DATA101

ESA Sea Surface Salinity Climate Change Initiative (Sea_Surface_Salinity_cci): weekly and monthly sea surface salinity products, v03.21, for 2010 to 2020 J. Boutin et al. https://doi.org/10.5285/5920a2c77e3c45339477acd31ce62c3c

Global Ocean Gridded L 4 Sea Surface Heights And Derived Variables Reprocessed 1993 Ongoing CLS https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00148

Short summary

We use a high-resolution ocean-atmosphere coupled simulation to assess the effects of fine-scale sea surface temperature, surface currents, and ocean vertical stratification on the spatial variability of latent heat flux in the Northwest Tropical Atlantic. The results show significant impacts from these three variables in latent heat flux. They stress the need to account for fine-scale ocean processes in the coarser global coupled models even in relatively quiescent regions like the tropics.