HEAT BUDGET IN THE NORTH-EAST ATLANTIC AS INFERRED FROM AUTONOMOUS PROFILING FLOATS.

Carole GRIT – Herlé MERCIER

Laboratoire de Physique des Océans – IFREMER Brest – France.

 We use the ARGO data to study the upper-ocean heat balance. The evolution of heat content from one ARGO profile to the other gives indications on surface air-sea heat fluxes. This balance is tested in the POMME region located to the west of the Iberian Peninsula, where accurate air-sea heat fluxes calibrated using in situ measurements are available from CNRM (Météo-France, Toulouse). Preliminary results suggest that the balance between heat content change and surface air-sea heat flux holds to better than 10 W m^-2 in this North East Atlantic region.