Abstract
A high-resolution atmospheric model of the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) is used to investigate the climatic effects of mesoscale oceanic eddies (OEs) in the North Pacific (NPac) in spring and the respective effects of OEs in the northern NPac associated with the Kuroshio Extension (KE) and of OEs in the southern NPac related to the subtropical countercurrent. Results show that mesoscale OEs in the NPac can strengthen the upper-level ridge (trough) in the central (eastern) subtropical NPac, together with markedly weakened (strengthened) westerly winds to its south. The mesoscale OEs in the whole NPac act to weaken the upper-level storm track and strengthen lower-level storm activities in the NPac. However, atmospheric responses to the northern and southern NPac OEs are more prominent. The northern NPac OEs can induce tropospheric barotropic responses with a tripole geopotential height (GPH) anomaly pattern to the north of 30° N, while the OEs in both the northern and southern NPac can enhance the upper-level ridge (trough) in the central (eastern) subtropical NPac. Additionally, the northern NPac OEs can shrink the lower-level subtropical high and weaken the easterly trade winds at the low latitudes, while the southern NPac OEs result in a southward shift of the lower-level subtropical high and an eastward shift of the upper-level westerly jet stream. The southern and northern NPac OEs have similar effects on the storm track, leading to an enhanced lower-level storm track over the KE via moistening the atmospheric boundary layer; and they can also exert significant remote influences on lower- and upper-level storm activities over the Northeast Pacific off the west coast of North America. When the intensities of OEs are doubled in the model, the spatial distribution of atmospheric responses is robust, with a larger and more significant magnitude. Additionally, although OEs are part of the mesoscale oceanic processes, the springtime OEs play an opposite role in mesoscale sea-surface temperature anomalies. These findings point to the potential of improving the forecasts of extratropical springtime storm systems and the projections of their responses to future climate change, by improving the representation of ocean eddy-atmosphere interaction in forecast and climate models.
Highlights
Given that the number of oceanic eddies (OEs) in the North Pacific (NPac) reaches its maximum in spring, which can cause significant local atmospheric responses [32,33,34], we aim to investigate the effects of OEs in the NPac on large-scale atmospheric circulation and storm track in spring by conducting a series of numerical simulations based on realistic distributions of OEs without any other mesoscale processes, which differs from many previous studies (e.g., Putrasahan et al [35]; Seo et al [36]; Ma et al [29,30]; Jia et al [37])
We found that the latent heat flux (LHF) averaged over the Kuroshio Extension (KE) (130◦ –165◦ E, 15◦ –25◦ N) is 147.8 and 165.2 W m−2 in observations and the model, respectively, while the respective LHF averaged over the subtropical region (135◦ E–150◦ W, 10◦ –25◦ N) is 144.9 and 174.3 W m−2, indicating a ~15%
The model captures the springtime upper-level storm track extending across the NPac well, with its maximum center above the central NPac, except for a slightly overestimated Eddy kinetic energy (EKE) in the atmosphere
Summary
Air-sea interactions have always been an important topic in climate research. In the extratropics, they are often characterized by a negative correlation between surface wind speed (SWS) and sea surface temperature (SST) on a basin scale, indicative of the atmospheric role in forcing the ocean. A positive correlation between SWS and SST has been identified on small scales. SWS is found to be locally higher over warm water and lower over cool water, which is indicative of the active oceanic role in forcing the atmosphere [2,3,4,5,6,7]. The definitions of the spatial scale of these mesoscale processes are flexible in actual research
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