Key roles of surface wave in the development of new generation ocean-related models

Abstract

The time and spatial scales of surface waves are several seconds and hundreds of meters, which are much smaller than those of ocean circulation and climate, months and thousands of kilometers or even bigger. As a result, ocean surface wave models are separated from ocean circulation models and climate models. During the past 2 decades, we find that surface waves play a dominant role in the vertical mixing of the upper ocean, and heavily modulate the air-sea momentum and heat fluxes. (1) By including surface waves in ocean general circulation models (OGCMs), the ever-standing simulated shallow mixed layer and over-estimated sea surface temperature (SST) especially in summer faced by nearly all OGCMs are dramatically reduced, 80-90% of common errors can be removed from OGCMs; (2) Although the forecasting error of Tropical Cyclone (TC) track is reduced by about half during the past decades, the forecasting of TC intensity has no much progress. By including surface waves, the TC intensity error is reduced by about 40%; (3) SST is a crucial parameter in the climate system. All climate models have huge SST simulation bias, which has lasted for half a century. By including surface waves, the SST bias can be reduced by about 60%. All the above suggests that surface waves should be included in new-generation ocean-related models, including ocean, TC, and climate models, to improve their forecasting ability.