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Tropical Cyclone Interaction with the Ocean: The Role of High-Frequency (Subdaily) Coupled Processes
- Source :
- Journal of Climate
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- American Meteorological Society, 2017.
-
Abstract
- Through tropical cyclone (TC) activity the ocean and the atmosphere exchange a large amount of energy. In this work possible improvements introduced by a higher coupling frequency are tested between the two components of a climate model in the representation of TC intensity and TC–ocean feedbacks. The analysis is based on the new Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per I Cambiamenti Climatici Climate Model (CMCC-CM2-VHR), capable of representing realistic TCs up to category-5 storms. A significant role of the negative sea surface temperature (SST) feedback, leading to a weakening of the cyclone intensity, is made apparent by the improved representation of high-frequency coupled processes. The first part of this study demonstrates that a more realistic representation of strong TC count is obtained by coupling atmosphere and ocean components at hourly instead of daily frequency. Coherently, the positive bias of the annually averaged power dissipation index associated with TCs is reduced by one order of magnitude when coupling at the hourly frequency, compared to both forced mode and daily coupling frequency results. The second part of this work shows a case study (a modeled category-5 typhoon) analysis to verify the impact of a more realistic representation of the high-frequency coupling in representing the TC effect on the ocean; the theoretical subsurface warming induced by TCs is well represented when coupling the two components at the higher frequency. This work demonstrates that an increased horizontal resolution of model components is not sufficient to ensure a realistic representation of intense and fast-moving systems, such as tropical and extratropical cyclones, but a concurrent increase in coupling frequency is required.
- Subjects :
- Tropical cyclone
Atmospheric Science
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Sea surface temperature
General circulation models
Storm
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
Atmospheric sciences
01 natural sciences
Coupled model
Hurricanes/typhoon
Atmosphere
13. Climate action
Climatology
Typhoon
Environmental science
Cyclone
Climate model
Intensity (heat transfer)
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15200442 and 08948755
- Volume :
- 30
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Climate
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....e571609dbdb2babddff25b34edf74a7f