Air-sea interaction and upper ocean variability in the Tropical and Northern Indian Oceans: Modeling-observation integration using Navy-ESPC system
Abstract
The accurate prediction of marine weather and upper ocean currents is crucial for Navy s operation (ships and submarines). Hence, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) have spent a substantial amount of resources in recent years on developing and improving Navy s numerical prediction model, the Navy-ESPC (Earth System Prediction Capability) system, which include ocean, land, and atmospheric components and coupling between these components. To further improve the ability of the Navy-ESPC system to predict ocean and atmospheric variability, it is critical to understand detailed physical processes in the ocean, atmosphere and their feedback,which must be well represented in the model. In the last 10 years, ONR Marine Meteorology and Physical Oceanography programs primarily focus on investigating the upper ocean and air-sea interaction processes in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Seas, because of the importance of these regions for the Navy s operation. Accordingly, a substantial amount of observational data in the upper ocean and atmosphere havebeen collected during the field campaigns conducted by ONR. While the analysis of these data has contributed to enhance our understanding of a variety of oceanic and atmospheric phenomena through fully describing variability of ocean and atmosphere, many of thesedata have not been effectively used for weather and climate forecast model improvement. Also, it is difficult to fully understand the important processes unambiguously by analyzing observational data alone. For example, the relative importance of vertical mixing and three-dimensional ocean dynamical processes for sea surface temperature variations cannot be "quantified" solely by the observational analysis.The proposed project emphasizes modeling-observation integration in which the upper ocean and lower atmosphere data collected by recent ONR field campaigns as well as other in situ and satellite data will be maximally utilized for model validation and evaluation, including the representation (parameterizations) of upper ocean mixing processes in the Navy-ESPC system. Our main objectives in this study are to identify and understand key physical and dynamical mechanisms that control upper ocean variability and air-sea interaction over the tropical and northern Indian Ocean, and to evaluate these physical processes simulated by the ocean component of the Navy-ESPC system. Our analyses will specifically focus on upper ocean processes associated with atmospheric and oceanic phenomena which are frequently observed over in Indian Ocean. As the current operational Navy-ESPC system is designed to forecast for the time scales from several days to sub seasonal, processes on these time scales such as those associated with atmospheric intra-seasonal oscillations, atmospheric rivers, and marine heatwaves will be investigated. In particular, high resolution ocean general circulation model simulations with several different upper ocean mixing parameterizations will be conducted, and key physical processes identified through the observational data analysis will be compared with those simulated by the model. In addition, a series of sensitivity simulations which isolate and quantify specific processes will be performed. Completion of the proposed project will substantially advance our understanding of upper ocean and air-sea interaction processes over the Indian Ocean. Also, thorough comparisons of observational data with numerical model simulations will evaluate how well physical processes associated with oceanic and atmospheric phenomena are represented in the model, and such evaluation will in turn help to further improve the Navy-ESPC system. Approved for Public Release
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 24, 2023
- Source ID
- N000142312710
Entities
People
- Jessica Ramon
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi
- United States Navy