High-resolution modeling of local air-sea interaction within the Marine Continent using COAMPS
Abstract
The Maritime Continent (MC) is a region of intense deep atmospheric convection that serves as an important source of forcing for the Hadley and Walker circulations. The convective activity in the MC region spans multiple scales from local mesoscales to regional scales, and impacts equatorial wave propagation, coupled air-sea interaction and intra seasonal oscillations. The complex distribution of islands, shallow seas with fairly small heat storage and deep seas with large heat capacity is challenging to model. Diurnal convection over land-sea is part of a land-sea breeze system on a small scale, and is highly influenced by large variations in orography over land and marginal seas. Daytime solar insolation, run-off from the Archipelago and nighttime rainfall tends to stabilize the water column, while mixing by tidal currents and locally forced winds promote vertical mixing. The runoff from land and rivers and high net precipitation result in fresh water lenses that enhance vertical stability in the water column and help maintain high SST. We use the fully coupled atmosphere-ocean-wave version of the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) developed at NRL with resolution of a few kilometers to investigate the air-sea interaction associated with the land-sea breeze system in the MC under active and inactive phases of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. The high resolution enables simulation of strong SST gradients associated with local upwelling in deeper waters and strong salinity gradients near rivers and from heavy precipitation.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMOS21B1971J
- Keywords:
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- 3339 Ocean/atmosphere interactions;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3373 Tropical dynamics;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 4220 Coral reef systems;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERALDE: 4243 Marginal and semi-enclosed seas;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL