Impact of Typhoons on the Western Pacific: Temporal and Horizontal Variability of SST Cooling, 2013
Abstract
The long term goal of this research has been to understand those aspects of 1) the ocean s response to a tropical cyclone (TC) that impact TC/ocean interaction, and 2) the relaxation (or recovery) following a TC passage. This project is now more than a full year past the end of the nominal grant period (plus extension). The ocean response study has sought the development of a physically-based metric of the upper ocean thermal field, dubbed T100, that accounts for the TC-relevant spatial variation of upper ocean temperature gradient, initial mixed-layer depth, etc., that contribute to hurricane-ocean interaction. With this metric and improved understanding we should be in position to make better forecasts of hurricane-ocean interaction, and especially of hurricane intensity (Emanuel et al., 2004; Lin et al., 2013). This report will emphasize the relaxation process of the upper ocean and especially SST. The relaxation of SST can be quite rapid, with a cool anomaly e-folding in a week being fairly typical. What process(es) cause the cool SST in a TC wake to relax back toward warm and quasi-homogeneous pre-TC conditions?
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 25, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA598821
Entities
People
- James F. Price
Organizations
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution