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| - | Air-Sea Fluxes | |
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| - | Westerly Wind Burst | |
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| - | SEACAT | |
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The Role of Upper Ocean Processes in Modulating Air-Sea Fluxes During TOGA COARE
Project Summary
This proposal primarily addresses upper ocean processes which influence vertical fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum in the climatically-important western Pacific warm pool. We propose a coordinated suite of collaborative data analysis and modeling activities aimed at ultimately improving air-sea coupling parameterizations in 3-D coupled general circulation models (GCMs), using observations from the TOGA Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment (COARE). The specific tasks that we will undertake include development of an integrated upper ocean analysis for the ocean Intensive Flux Array; heat and salinity budget computations for the IFA including estimation of local and remote 3D circulation influences on vertical mixing; statistical analysis of coherent meso- and small-scale thermohaline features in the upper ocean and their contributions to vertical fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum; collaborative development of a 1-D coupled model; and collaboration with ocean and atmosphere modelers working on small-, meso- and large-scales.The completion of these tasks will contribute to achieving the following goals of COARE:
- to describe and understand the principal processes responsible for the coupling of ocean and atmosphere in the western Pacific warm pool system,
- to describe and understand the oceanic response to combined buoyancy and wind stress forcing in the western Pacific warm pool region, and
- to describe and understand the multiple scale interactions that extend the oceanic and atmospheric influence of the western Pacific warm pool system to other regions and vice versa.
Last modified: December 22, 1997