Tropical Dynamics Process Studies and Numerical Methods
Abstract
We have developed the skin sea surface temperature (skin SST) model and implemented it in the NOGAPS model. Skin SST is directly responsible for many physical processes in the atmosphere such as, for example, occurrence and strength of the deep atmospheric convection. In turn, these convective systems modulate such large scale weather events in tropics such as tropical cyclone genesis, Madden Julian Oscillations (MJO), flux exchange. To model both skin SST bulk SST differences as well as their diurnal cycle one dimensional heat transfer equation (Zeng & Beljaars, 2005) was used. Two layers are considered - warm layer and skin layer. The heat budget in these 2 layers defines relationship between skin and bulk temperatures. Solar radiation is distributed in the warm layer and simple exponential decay is assumed. Wind speed is influencing strongly the results - for large wind speeds the differences between skin and bulk SST are small. Cloudiness is taken to account through changes of the solar radiation input. The model is run every prognostic time step of NOGAPS and there is feedback with the convection parameterization in the model.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 16, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA546831
Entities
People
- Piotr J. Flatau
Organizations
- Scripps Institution of Oceanography