DiuSST: a conceptual model of diurnal warm layers for idealized atmospheric simulations with interactive sea surface temperature

Abstract. The diurnal variability in sea surface temperature (SST) may play an important role in cloud organization above the tropical ocean, with implications for precipitation extremes, storminess, and climate sensitivity. Recent cloud-resolving simulations demonstrate how imposed diurnal SST oscillations can strongly and delicately impact mesoscale convective organization. In spite of this nuanced interaction, many idealized modeling studies of tropical convection either assume a constant, homogeneous SST or, in the case of a responsive sea surface, represent the upper ocean by a slab with fixed thickness. Here we show that slab ocean models with constant heat capacity fail to capture the wind-dependence of observed diurnal sea surface warming. To alleviate this shortcoming, we present a simple yet explicitly depth-resolved model of upper-ocean temperature dynamics under atmospheric forcing. Our modular scheme describes turbulent mixing as diffusion with a wind-dependent diffusivity, in addition to a bulk mixing term and heat fluxes entering as sources and sinks. Using observational data, we apply Bayesian inference to calibrate the model. In contrast to a slab model, our model captures the exponential reduction in the diurnal warming amplitude with increasing wind speed. Further, our model performs comparably to a more elaborately parameterized diurnal warm-layer model. Formulated as a single partial differential equation with three key tuning parameters, the model is a suitable interactive numerical boundary condition for idealized atmospheric simulations.