Open research questions in Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes

What the literature leaves open

• Further research is needed to investigate the dynamics of SLA variability in the northern Indian Ocean. The role of other atmospheric and oceanic factors in influencing the sea level variability in the BoB and AS needs to be explored. The impact of climate change on the IOD and its effects on the sea level variability in the northern Indian Ocean should be studied.

  Role of local and remote equatorial wind forcing in autumn sea level variability in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea during IOD years between 1999 and 2022 · 2026 · DOI

• While this study offers valuable insights into surface MHWs in 2020, the dynamics and drivers of subsurface MHW in the BoB remain largely unexamined, warranting further investigations.

  Evolution of marine heatwaves and air-sea interactions during the 2020 Southwest Monsoon in the Bay of Bengal · 2026 · DOI

• The separation of the astronomical P 1 and K 2 tides from the seasonal modulation of K 1 and S 2 is a challenge. Gaps in the data can remove tidal cycles and bias the results.

  Gaussian process reconstruction and seasonal change in tidal non-linearity in a monsoon-influenced estuary · 2026 · DOI

• One limitation of our study is its focus on surface temperatures, whereas extreme temperatures can also occur throughout the water column with severe impacts on ecosystems (Wyatt et al. A1 and A2) have not been explored in detail in this study because the amplitude of the data assimilation increments is unknown.

  Marine heatwaves across the central South Pacific: characteristics, mechanisms, and modulation by El Niño Southern Oscillation · 2026 · DOI

• An examination of these results regarding the dependence of convergence or divergence on the forcing frequency should be examined using an OGCM along with the results associated with the direction of long-term longshore drift by the rotary wind forcing.

  Horizontal transport on the continental shelf driven by periodic rotary wind stress · 2026 · DOI

• This area is located far from the northern station (vin01), therefore, surface currents near the southern edge of the interpolation domain may be reconstructed with limited information from that site, owing to the reduction of working range at vin01.

  Coastal circulation and dispersion of passive tracers in the Red River plume region: unveiling seasonal- and intra-seasonal variability · 2026 · DOI

• Given that the dipole eddy system’s influence on the NECC is region-dependent and not yet quantified, future work should integrate combine high-resolution modelling with sensitivity experiments to clarify how the ME and HE modulate the NECC’s structure and energy budget, thus advancing understanding of regional multiscale dynamical coupling processes.

  ENSO-related eddy kinetic energy in the western pacific north equatorial countercurrent source region: characteristics and dynamical mechanisms · 2026 · DOI

• Future work will investigate whether larger ensembles of controlled macroscopic transport trajectories can clarify when coarse-grained transport dynamics generate effective finite-memory structure and when such delayed predictive information admits stable sparse symbolic closure.

  Learning effective Sargassum transport dynamics from limited drifter observations · 2026 · DOI

• The study highlights the need to investigate the effects of human activities on the magnitude and frequency of renewal events. The paper notes that climate change impacts can affect exchange flow dynamics and basin hydrodynamics within silled fjords.

  Basin water renewal in land-locked fjords with shallow threshold sills: impacts from natural and anthropogenic change · 2026 · DOI

• The ability of global ocean models to represent coastal submesoscale dynamics remains largely unexplored. There is a need for ocean models capable of accurately simulating coastal ocean processes that contribute to interacting and compounding risks affecting societal well-being.

  Towards high-fidelity simulations of coastal submesoscale baroclinic instabilities with MPAS-O (vE3SM3.0.0) – Part 1: Idealized experiments · 2026 · DOI

• Seasonal variability of FDOM distribution has not been studied comprehensively. While fractions of fluorophore groups were fairly stable, their integral fluorescence intensities varied widely.

  Systematic Study of CDOM in the Volga River Basin Using EEM-PARAFAC · 2025 · DOI

• Standard summer climatologies for the western Black Sea shelf consistently report MLD values of 10–25 m and even under calm conditions, MLDs shallower than 5 m are rarely reported in the open-shelf literature for this region.

  Hydrographic Stratification and Pollutant Retention at Constanța Port Roadstead, NW Black Sea: Five-Layer Dissolved Oxygen Structure and a CTD-Derived Retention Index from a Single-Station Profile · 2026 · DOI

• The study provides multi-dataset observation of a low-density filament on the submesoscale [O(0.1–10 m)] driven by freshwater-driven buoyancy embedded and modulated within a tidal mixing front.

  Filamentogenesis and Filamentolysis of a Low-Density Filament: Dynamic Processes in the Near-Surface Ocean Under Tidal Forcing · 2026 · DOI

• Referring to Equation 16, variations in the weights induce waves that rotate clockwise, counterclockwise, or remain stationary. The origin of the wave structure with alternating positive and negative phases lies in the angular-dependent function within the driving term, which ensures that the eigenvalue remains non-zero. A pertinent question arises: Can the angular dependence in the driving term be eliminated?

  Assessing tidal sensitivity to bottom friction: analytical insights for model optimization · 2026 · DOI

• While a detailed analysis of this matter is beyond the scope of this paper, it calls for a reassessment of how realistic simulated Lagrangian particle-beaching statistics are if they include – or even fully rely on – beaching introduced by open-ocean Stokes drift provided on a non-matching grid with nonzero velocities from ocean to land.

  Non-negligible impact of Stokes drift and wave-driven Eulerian currents on simulated surface particle dispersal in the Mediterranean Sea · 2025 · DOI

• The use of ray tracing may be questioned because, when phase-speed variability is included in ray tracing, the length scale of phase-speed variability can be comparable to or shorter than the wavelength (invalidating the slowly varying assumption), and ray paths could vary widely (Park and Watts, 2006; Rainville and Pinkel, 2006).

  Process-based modelling of nonharmonic internal tides using adjoint, statistical, and stochastic approaches – Part 2: Adjoint frequency response analysis, stochastic models, and synthesis · 2025 · DOI

• Current is often described through its cycles of extension, retraction, and eddy shedding, yet it remains unclear how much of this variability can be captured by a reduced…

  Loop current extension as an effective delayed dynamical system · 2026 · DOI

• The method does not demonstrate temporal invariance or out-of-sample prediction, - The study does not evaluate the universal applicability of a single α value, - The method is limited to the specific scenarios and datasets used in the study, - The algorithm has linear time complexity O(n) and space complexity O(n), - The method requires a predefined radius around the observed position to apply the estimated α…

  Cross-regional evaluation of thermodynamically consistent fractional-order integration for observation-constrained ocean heat content estimation · 2026 · DOI

• Investigate the temporal invariance of the fractional-order adjustment, - Evaluate the out-of-sample prediction capability of the method, - Assess the universal applicability of a single α value, - Examine the method's performance in different oceanographic settings, - Develop a method to select the optimal α value for different…

  Cross-regional evaluation of thermodynamically consistent fractional-order integration for observation-constrained ocean heat content estimation · 2026 · DOI

• Further study on the separation of the astronomical P1 and K2 tides from the seasonal modulation of K1 and S2, - Investigation of the effect of river discharge on overtide generation in other monsoon-influenced…

  Gaussian process reconstruction and seasonal change in tidal non-linearity in a monsoon-influenced estuary · 2026 · DOI

• The comparisons are based on all available profiles after quality control, - The results primarily reflect the model performance in observed areas, - The model has a limited horizontal resolution of 1/12° longitude by 1/15° latitude, - The wave parameters outside the CWM domain are extrapolated from values within the model…

  Evaluation of wave-induced mixing schemes in a northwestern pacific ocean model · 2026 · DOI

• Investigating the impact of individual and combined climate change effects on water renewal in fjords, - Studying the sensitivity of numerical model outputs to a range of model parameters, - Examining the effects of human activities on water renewal…

  Basin water renewal in land-locked fjords with shallow threshold sills: impacts from natural and anthropogenic change · 2026 · DOI

• Freshwater fluxes play a crucial role in the ocean salinity, circulation, and sea level variability, and yet are often poorly Ocean Sci., 22, 3457–3477, 2026…

  Quantifying freshwater fluxes from Major rivers and assessing their impact on the Atlantic Ocean · 2026 · DOI

• Further research is needed to fully explore the capabilities of MPAS-O in simulating coastal submesoscale dynamics, - The study of the effects of different viscosity coefficients on the representation of submesoscale baroclinic instabilities, - The comparison of MPAS-O with other ocean models, - The application of MPAS-O to real-world coastal ocean…

  Towards high-fidelity simulations of coastal submesoscale baroclinic instabilities with MPAS-O (vE3SM3.0.0) – Part 1: Idealized experiments · 2026 · DOI

• The coastal dynamics of the VMSC, especially within the HFR measurement domain, during the transition period of the summer monsoon are influenced by various factors, amongst others winds, coastal topography and larger-scale Ocean Sci., 21, 1–18, 2025…

  Surface circulation characterization along the middle southern coastal region of Vietnam from high-frequency radar and numerical modeling · 2025 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Oceanographic and Atmospheric Processes

• A dipole mode in the tropical Indian Ocean · Nature · 1999 · 3,854 citations
• Global Sea Floor Topography from Satellite Altimetry and Ship Depth Soundings · Science · 1997 · 3,653 citations
• Improvements of the Daily Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (DOISST) Version 2.1 · Journal of Climate · 2020 · 989 citations
• Characteristics of the ocean simulations in the Max Planck Institute Ocean Model (MPIOM) the ocean component of the MPI‐Earth system model · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems · 2013 · 645 citations
• Increasing ocean stratification over the past half-century · Nature Climate Change · 2020 · 504 citations
• The Current Configuration of the OSTIA System for Operational Production of Foundation Sea Surface Temperature and Ice Concentration Analyses · Remote Sensing · 2020 · 501 citations
• High-impact marine heatwaves attributable to human-induced global warming · Science · 2020 · 438 citations
• Argo Data 1999–2019: Two Million Temperature-Salinity Profiles and Subsurface Velocity Observations From a Global Array of Profiling Floats · Frontiers in Marine Science · 2020 · 395 citations
• Drivers and impacts of the most extreme marine heatwave events · Scientific Reports · 2020 · 381 citations
• A Continental Drift Flipbook · The Journal of Geology · 2004 · 331 citations

Most recent work

• Ocean Heat Content Sets Another Record in 2025 · Advances in Atmospheric Sciences · 2026
• Seasonal and spatial variability of marine nepheloid layers in the deep South China Sea · Deep Sea Research Part II Topical Studies in Oceanography · 2026
• Cumulative hydrodynamic impacts of offshore wind farms on North Sea currents and surface temperatures · Communications Earth & Environment · 2026
• AI in Satellite Remote Sensing of the Ocean · Proceedings of the IEEE · 2026
• High coastal eddy activity around Antarctica revealed by SWOT · National Science Review · 2026
• New global mean dynamic topography CNES-CLS-22 combining drifters, hydrography profiles and high frequency radar data · Earth system science data · 2026
• Evidence of Increased Deep Ocean Warming From a Sea Level Budget Approach · Earth s Future · 2026
• Decades of change: Warming trends and hydrographic variability of Atlantic Water as observed in the west Spitsbergen current (1997–2024) · Deep Sea Research Part II Topical Studies in Oceanography · 2026
• Wide‐Swath Satellite Altimetry Data Improves Modeled Mesoscale and Submesoscale Dynamics in a Western Boundary Current · Geophysical Research Letters · 2026
• Representation of Surface Mixed‐Layer Eddies Affects the Large‐Scale Ventilation of the Global Ocean · Geophysical Research Letters · 2026

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