The in situ generation of easterly waves (EWs) in the east Pacific (EPAC) is investigated using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model. The sensitivity of the model to the suppression of EW forcing by locally generated convective disturbances is examined. Specifically, local forcing of EWs is removed by reducing the terrain height in portions of Central and South America to suppress robust sources of diurnal convective variability, most notably in the Panama Bight. High terrain contributes to the initiation of mesoscale convective systems in the early morning that propagate westward into the EPAC warm pool. When such mesoscale convective systems are suppressed in the model, EW variance is significantly reduced. This result suggests that EPAC EWs can be generated locally in association with higher-frequency convective disturbances, and these disturbances are determined to be an important source of EPAC EW variability. However, EPAC EW variability is not completely eliminated in such sensitivity experiments, indicating the importance for other sources of EW forcing, namely, EWs propagating into the EPAC from West Africa. Examination of the EW vorticity budget in the model suggests that nascent waves are zonally elongated and amplified by horizontal advection and vertical stretching of vorticity. Changes in the mean state between the control run and simulation with reduced terrain height also complicate interpretation of the results.
Meinen, C. S.; Garzoli, S. L.; Perez, R. C.; Campos, E.; Piola, A. R.; Chidichimo, M. P.; Dong, S. F.; Sato, O. T.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Ocean Science, 13(1), 175-194.
Description:
The Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) at 34.5 degrees S in the South Atlantic carries a significant fraction of the cold deep limb of the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), and therefore its variability affects the meridional heat transport...
This study examines the causes of observed sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical North Atlantic between 1982 and 2015. The emphasis is on the boreal winter and spring seasons, when tropical Atlantic SSTs project strongly onto the At...
Kourafalou, V. H.; Androulidakis, Y. S.; Halliwell, G. R.; Kang, H.; Mehari, M. M.; Le Henaff, M.; Atlas, R.; Lumpkin, R.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Progress in Oceanography, 148, 1-25.
Description:
A high resolution, free-running model has been developed for the hurricane region of the North Atlantic Ocean. The model is evaluated with a variety of observations to ensure that it adequately represents both the ocean climatology and variability ov...
Trinanes, J. A.; Olascoaga, M. J.; Goni, G. J.; Maximenko, N. A.; Griffin, D. A.; Hafner, J.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Journal of Operational Oceanography, 9(2), 126-138.
Description:
Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014. Potential sites of where the plane entered the water are considered within a vast region of the Indian Ocean. We present a methodology to assess the potential crash site based on where airpla...
Volkov, D. L.; Lee, S. K.; Landerer, F. W.; Lumpkin, R.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, 44(2), 927-936.
Description:
The persistent energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, inferred from satellite measurements, indicates that the Earth's climate system continues to accumulate excess heat. As only sparse and irregular measurements of ocean heat below 2000m dep...
Leidner, S. M.; Nehrkorn, T.; Henderson, J.; Mountain, M.; Yunck, T.; Hoffman, R. N.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Monthly Weather Review, 145(2), 637-651.
Description:
Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) radio occultations (RO) over the last 10 years have proved to be a valuable and essentially unbiased data source for operational global numerical weather prediction. However, the existing sampling coverage is...
Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 121(10), 7547-7559.
Description:
The seasonal variability of the Florida Current (FC) transport is often characterized by the presence of an average annual cycle (8% of the variance) of approximate to 3 Sv range peaking in boreal summer. However, the seasonality displayed by the FC ...
Laurent, A.; Fennel, K.; Cai, W. J.; Huang, W. J.; Barbero, L.; Wanninkhof, R.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, 44(2), 946-956.
Description:
Nutrient inputs from the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River system into the northern Gulf of Mexico promote high phytoplankton production and lead to high respiration rates. Respiration coupled with water column stratification results in seasonal summer h...
Androulidakis, Y.; Kourafalou, V.; Halliwell, G.; Le Henaff, M.; Kang, H.; Mehari, M.; Atlas, R.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Ocean Dynamics, 66(12), 1559-1588.
Description:
The evolution of three successive hurricanes (Katia, Maria, and Ophelia) is investigated over the river plume area formed by the Amazon and Orinoco river outflows during September of 2011. The study focuses on hurricane impacts on the ocean structure...
Pendleton, L.; Comte, A.; Langdon, C.; Ekstrom, J. A.; Cooley, S. R.; Suatoni, L.; Beck, M. W.; Brander, L. M.; Burke, L.; Cinner, J. E.; Doherty, C.; Edwards, P. E. T.; Gledhill, D.; Jiang, L. Q.; van Hooidonk, R. J.; Teh, L.; Waldbusser, G. G.; Ritter, J.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
PLOS ONE, 11(11), 21.
Description:
Reefs and People at Risk Increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere put shallow, warm-water coral reef ecosystems, and the people who depend upon them at risk from two key global environmental stresses: 1) elevated sea surface temperature ...
Enochs, I. C.; Manzello, D. P.; Kolodziej, G.; Noonan, S. H. C.; Valentino, L.; Fabricius, K. E.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 283(1842), 8.
Description:
Ocean acidification (OA) impacts the physiology of diverse marine taxa; among them corals that create complex reef framework structures. Biological processes operating on coral reef frameworks remain largely unknown from naturally high-carbon-dioxide...
Heron, S. F.; Maynard, J. A.; van Hooidonk, R.; Eakin, C. M.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Scientific Reports, 6, 38402.
Description:
Coral reefs across the world's oceans are in the midst of the longest bleaching event on record (from 2014 to at least 2016). As many of the world's reefs are remote, there is limited information on how past thermal conditions have influenced reef co...
van Hooidonk, R.; Maynard, J.; Tamelander, J.; Gove, J.; Ahmadia, G.; Raymundo, L.; Williams, G.; Heron, S. F.; Planes, S.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Scientific Reports, 6, 39666.
Description:
Increasingly frequent severe coral bleaching is among the greatest threats to coral reefs posed by climate change. Global climate models (GCMs) project great spatial variation in the timing of annual severe bleaching (ASB) conditions; a point at whic...
Putman, N. F.; Lumpkin, R.; Sacco, A. E.; Mansfield, K. L.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 283(1844), 20161689.
Description:
Predictions of organismal movements in a fluid require knowing the fluid's velocity and potential contributions of the organism's behaviour (e.g. swimming or flying). While theoretical aspects of this work are reasonably well-developed, field-based v...
To understand the relationship among easterly waves, tropical cyclones (TCs), and the large-scale environment, a robust climatology of easterly waves for the tropical Western Hemisphere has been developed. The foundation for the climatology is a new ...
Christophersen, J. A.; Foltz, G. R.; Perez, R. C.;
Published Date:
2020
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125(22)
Description:
Diurnal and semidiurnal variations of atmospheric pressure and surface winds are fundamental to the Earth-Sun system. Past research in the tropical Pacific shows semidiurnal and diurnal patterns in the zonal and meridional wind anomalies, respectivel...
Wilczak, J. M.; Stoelinga, M.; Berg, L. K.; Sharp, J.; Draxl, C.; McCaffrey, K.; Banta, R. M.; Bianco, L.; Djalalova, I.; Lundquist, J. K.; Muradyan, P.; Choukulkar, A.; Leo, L.; Bonin, T.; Pichugina, Yelena; Eckman, R.; Long, C. N.; Lantz, K.; Worsnop, R. P.; Bickford, J.; Bodini, N.; Chand, D.; Clifton, A.; Cline, J.; Cook, David R.; Fernando, H. J.; Friedrich, K.; Krishnamurthy, R.; Marquis, M.; McCaa, J.; Olson, J. B.; Otarola-Bustos, S.; Scott, G.; Shaw, W. J.; Wharton, S.; White, A. B.;
Published Date:
2019
Source:
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(9), 1701-1723
Description:
The Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)- and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-funded program, with private-sector and university partners, which aims to improve the accuracy of n...
van der Linden, R.; Fink, A. H.; Pinto, J. G.; Tan, P. V.; Kiladis, G. N.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Journal of Climate, 29(16), 5801-5820.
Description:
Rainfall extremes have a large socioeconomic relevance for southern Vietnam. More than 30 million people live in this low-lying, flood-prone region in Southeast Asia. In this study the influence of the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) and convectively...
The West African monsoon (WAM) and its landmark features, which include African easterly waves (AEWs) and the African easterly jet (AEJ), exhibit significant intraseasonal variability in boreal summer. However, the degree to which this variability is...
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