Modeling the Near-Surface Diurnal Cycle of Sea Surface Temperature in the Mediterranean Sea

The diurnal cycle of sea surface temperature (SST) is an important component of the ocean-atmosphere system and is necessary for accurately computing air-sea heat fluxes. Ocean temperatures in the near-surface are highly sensitive to atmospheric conditions and can vary significantly depending on time of day. Ocean general circulation models are unable to fully capture the near-surface diurnal SST variability, because they do not possess the necessary vertical structure and resolution. Furthermore, SST observations come from a number of sources that represent the temperature at various near-surface depths. This presents difficulties when assimilating SST observations as well as constructing robust climate records of SST. In this study we model the fine-scale near-surface structure allowing SST comparisons between foundation SST, SST at depth, subskin SST, and skin SST. Hourly model results, forced and initialized using readily available reanalysis data, are from a 2-year period, 2013-2014, over the Mediterranean Sea. Various solar absorption parameterizations are examined, and the resulting SSTs are compared to Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager-derived observations of the skin temperature.