Meteorological influences of eddy-resolving ocean assimilation around the cold tongue to the north of the Japanese islands during winter 2004/2005

Abstract

Use of ocean data assimilation in meteorological applications is expected to reveal the influence of cloud-covered oceanic mesoscale processes on wintertime weather and climate in coastal areas. In particular, eddy-resolving Ocean Circulation Model (OCM) data assimilation that reproduces seasonally persistent oceanic mesoscale eddies is useful when simulating coastal precipitation. In the present study, the OCM-assimilation sea surface temperature (SST) is applied to a long-term atmospheric simulation over the Japan/East Sea area in the 2004/2005 winter season (December–February, DJF), to investigate seasonal and daily influences of oceanic mesoscale eddies on precipitation. The simulated winter precipitation is improved by the OCM assimilation via the DJF evaporation around a cold tongue. The strong intrusion of the southeast-directed cold tongue reduces the degree of overestimation by coastal precipitation simulations in December and January. In contrast, the ocean assimilation barely improves the simulation results in February because of weak intrusion of the cold tongue. In December and January, an abruptly large anomaly of northwesterly surface wind (> 1 m s−1) resulting from the OCM assimilation often influences 3-hour precipitation in the downstream area of the cold tongue. In contrast, the slowly-varying anomaly of evaporation does not necessarily lead to daily precipitation anomalies, although the DJF evaporation anomaly is important in the DJF precipitation.