Influence of sea surface wave-dependent roughness on summer precipitation over the Southeastern United States

Abstract

To study the influence of ocean surface roughness on summer precipitation over the southeastern United States, we perform singular value decomposition (SVD) analysis between the mean summer precipitations and the significant wave height from 1979 to 2017 over the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). The first dominant mode shows that the swell energy in the northern GOM is larger than that in the southern GOM, especially over the region adjacent to the southeastern United States (SE-US). Meanwhile, the precipitation in the SE-US is much heavier than the other regions. Composite analysis shows that when the first pattern takes place, the wind speed is small near the region of the SE-US, swell dominates. There is a cyclonic wind anomaly at 850 hPa over the SE-US, which results in strong upward motion, therefore heavy rainfall in this region. To further study the effect of the swell on the precipitation in the SE-US, we also design two numerical experiments using the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Transport (COAWST) Modelling System. In the control (CTL) experiment, the popular Charnock aerodynamical roughness length parameterization is adopted. In the other experiment, a wave-dependent roughness scheme is used. The precipitation in the SE-US is better simulated in the wave-dependent roughness experiment than in the CTL experiment. In summer, the 10-m wind speed is weak in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, and that means the swell is dominant in this region. The wave-dependent surface roughness strengthens the wind, which means that the momentum is transferred from the wave to the atmosphere under swell dominant conditions. The increase of the shear term and the cyclonic wind anomaly in the lower layers of the atmosphere leads to a stronger upward motion which drives heavier rainfall in the SE-US.