近日，中国海洋大学张志伟团队揭示全球海洋经向涡旋热输运以中尺度涡旋搅拌为主。相关论文于2025年8月21日发表在《中国科学：地球科学》杂志上。

尺度为O（10-100）km的海洋中尺度涡旋显著影响经向热输运，而经向热输运深刻地调节着地球气候系统。众所周知，涡旋诱导的经向热输运（EHT）可以通过中尺度涡旋的搅拌和捕获效应来实现，但它们的相对贡献仍然存在争议。先前的研究仅采用欧拉方法来量化两种类型的EHT，由于忽略了中尺度涡的潜在示踪剂泄漏，引入了系统偏差。

为了解决这一问题，研究组结合了欧拉和拉格朗日方法，以更准确地量化地表这两种类型的EHT。他们发现涡旋搅拌和捕集引起的EHTs都以极向为主，并在副热带锋区出现大值。在全球大部分海洋中，搅拌引起的表面高温比捕集引起的高温大1-2个数量级，考虑到整个水柱也是如此。此外，在少数海洋区域，如澳大利亚西南部和莫桑比克海峡，捕获效应也在很大程度上促成了EHT。上述结果表明，在全球大部分海域，中尺度涡旋的水平搅拌作用是EHT的主要机制，增强了对海洋经向热输运的认识。

附：英文原文

Title: Stirring by mesoscale eddies dominates meridional eddy heat transport in global ocean

Author: Qingguo YUAN, Zhiwei ZHANG, Tongya LIU, Wei ZHAO, Jiwei TIAN

Issue&Volume: 2025/08/21

Abstract: Oceanic mesoscale eddies with scales of O (10–100)km notably impact meridional heat transport, which profoundly modulates the Earth’s climate system. It is well known that eddy-induced meridional heat transport (EHT) can be caused by both the stirring and trapping effects of mesoscale eddies, but their relative contributions remain controversial. Previous studies that employed solely Eulerian methods to quantify the two types of EHT introduced systematic biases due to neglecting potential tracer leakage of mesoscale eddy. To address this, the study combines Eulerian and Lagrangian methods to more accurately quantify these two types of EHT at the surface. We find that both eddy stirring- and trapping-induced EHTs are dominantly poleward with large values occurring in subtropical frontal regions. Stirring-induced surface EHT is 1–2 orders of magnitude larger than trapping-induced EHT throughout most of the global ocean, which also holds when considering the full water column. In addition, the trapping effect also substantially contributes to the EHT in a few ocean areas, such as southwest of Australia and the Mozambique Channel. The above results demonstrate that the horizontal stirring effect of mesoscale eddies is the dominant mechanism of EHT throughout most of the global ocean, which enhances our understanding of meridional heat transport in the ocean.

DOI: 10.1007/s11430-024-1653-8

Source: https://www.sciengine.com/SCES/doi/10.1007/s11430-024-1653-8