Convection within atmospheric storms organized by ocean submesoscale fronts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The dynamics of mid-latitude storms are driven by moisture processes, convection, and associated precipitation. Over the past two decades, studies have emphasized the role of western boundary currents in the ocean, such as the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio Extension, in providing moisture to the atmosphere, thereby intensifying convective activity (e.g., clouds and rain) and storms intensity. While the influence of oceanic mesoscale (~200 km-size) and larger scales on storm tracks is relatively understood, the impact of oceanic submesoscale fronts (~10-20 km-size), characterized by strong sea surface temperature gradients of 5°C per 10 km, remains unknown. Using a global coupled ocean-atmosphere simulation at a km-scale resolution, we show that half of latent heat flux variability at the air-sea interface is driven by oceanic motions at the mesoscale (~40%) and submesoscale (~10-20 km-size, <10%) in the Kuroshio Extension during winter. The analysis further demonstrates that ocean submesoscale fronts drive a secondary circulation, extending above the planetary boundary layer up to 4 km within the troposphere, which enhances diabatic processes and convective precipitations within storms. In the warm sector of storms, ocean submesoscale fronts locally account for half of the total diabatic heating and half of the total precipitations, averaging 14 mm/day over five days. In contrast, diabatic heating and precipitations associated with submesoscale fronts are respectively three and twelve times smaller in the cold sector. As such, ocean submesoscale fronts pump moisture from the ocean to the atmosphere and have the potential to affect storms intensification. Overall, these results suggest that SWOT can identify the influence of ocean fine-scales on weather systems by measuring air-sea exchanges down to the submesoscales. Reference: Vivant, F., Siegelman, L., Klein, P., Torres, H. S., Menemenlis, D., & Molod, A. M. (2025). Ocean submesoscale fronts induce diabatic heating and convective precipitation within storms. Communications Earth & Environment, 6(1), 69. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02002-z
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".