Evaluation of Haney-Type Surface Thermal Boundary Conditions Using a Coupled Atmosphere and Ocean Model
Abstract
A coupled atmosphere-ocean model developed at the Institute for Space Studies at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Russell et al,, 1995) was used to verify the validity of Haney-type surface thermal boundary condition, which linearly connects net downward surface heat flux Q to air / sea temperature difference DeltaT by a relaxation coefficient K. The model was initiated from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) atmospheric observations for 1 December 1977, and from the National Ocean Data Center (NODC) global climatological mean December temperature and salinity fields at 1 deg x 1 deg resolution. The time step is 7.5 minutes. We integrated the model for 450 days and obtained a complete model-generated global data set of daily mean downward net surface flux Q, surface air temperature T(A), and sea surface temperature T(O). Then, we calculated the cross-correlation coefficients (CCC) between Q and DeltaT. The ensemble mean CCC fields show (a) no correlation between Q and DeltaT in the equatorial regions, and (b) evident correlation (CCC> 0.7) between Q and DeltaT in the middle and high latitudes. Additionally, we did the variance analysis and found that when K=120 W m(-2)K(-1), the two standard deviations, sigma(Q) and sigma(KDeltaT), are quite close in the middle and high latitudes. These results agree quite well with a previous research (Chu et al, 1998) on analyzing the NCEP re-analyzed surface data, except that a smaller value of x (80 W m(-2)K(-1)) was found in the previous study.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA480114
Entities
People
- Peter Cheng Chu
- Shihua Lü
- Yuchun Chen
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School