Ocean-Atmosphere Coupling Processes Affecting Predictability in the Climate System
Abstract
Predictions of the ocean and atmosphere are often sensitive to coupling at the air-sea interface in ways that depend on the temporal and spatial scales of the target fields. We will discuss several aspects of these types of coupled interactions including oceanic and atmospheric forecast applications. For oceanic mesoscale eddies, the coupling can influence the energetics of the oceanic flow itself. For Madden-Julian Oscillation onset, the coupling timestep should resolve the diurnal cycle to properly raise time-mean SST and latent heat flux prior to deep convection. For Atmospheric River events, the evolving SST field can alter the trajectory and intensity of precipitation anomalies along the California coast. Improvements in predictions will also rely on identifying and alleviating sources of biases in the climate states of the coupled system. Surprisingly, forecast skill can also be improved by enhancing stochastic variability in the atmospheric component of coupled models as found in a multiscale ensemble modeling approach.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A14C..05M
- Keywords:
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- 3307 Boundary layer processes;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 0750 Sea ice;
- CRYOSPHERE;
- 1847 Modeling;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4504 Air/sea interactions;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL