Mesoscale ocean-atmosphere interaction and large-scale climate variability in a regional coupled model
by Hyodae Seo
University of Hawaii
This
presentation is aimed at discussing some aspects of the
ocean-atmosphere interactions and their connection to the large-scale climate variability using a newly developed regional coupled climate model. The model, which couples the atmospheric Regional Spectral Model to the Regional Ocean Modeling System, is designed to capture the air-sea feedback arising from the oceanic fronts and eddies. Two unique examples of dynamic coupled feedbacks over the tropical instability waves in the Atlantic and the upwelling filaments in the Arabian Sea are presented to underscore the importance of these feedback effects on the regional oceans. Also discussed are the physical processes leading to extreme rainfall events from the African easterly waves and the subsequent impacts on the precipitation distributions within the marine Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. This highlights the importance of capturing synoptic-scale weather disturbances in the climate models for the better simulation of mean precipitation. Finally, some preliminary results are presented to illustrate how the aforementioned processes are simulated by tShe current model forced by global warming anomalies from the IPCC AR4 coupled GCMs.