Air-sea coupling improves the simulation of the western North Pacific summer monsoon

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Regional air-sea coupling plays a crucial role in modulating the climatology and variability of the Asian summer monsoon. The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, which is a community regional climate model, has been widely used for regional climate studies over Asia.


“Version 4 of the WRF model, namely WRF4, has just been released, and so a comparison of ocean-atmosphere coupled versus atmosphere-only WRF4 models over the WNP is a necessary but as yet unreported line of investigation,” explains Dr. Liwei Zou from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and author of a paper on this topic recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters.

Zou and his colleagues developed a new regional ocean-atmosphere coupled model based on WRF4 and the high-resolution regional version of LICOM (the LASG/IAP Climate Ocean Model) to investigate the impacts of regional air-sea coupling on the simulation of the western North Pacific summer monsoon. The resolution is set to 15 km (10 km) in the atmospheric (oceanic) model component, which is able to resolve the weather (ocean mesoscale eddies).

“Our model results indicate that WRF4-LICOM improves the simulation of the summer mean monsoon rainfall, circulations, sea surface net heat fluxes, and propagations of the daily rainband over the WNP”, states Dr. Zou.

The local observed daily SST over the WNP is a response to the overlying summer monsoon. In the WRF4 model, the modeled atmosphere exhibits a passive response to the underlying daily SST anomalies. With the inclusion of regional air-sea coupling, the simulated daily SST-rainfall relationship is significantly improved.

“We recommend using the regional coupled model WRF4-LICOM for future dynamical downscaling of simulations and projections over this region,” concludes Dr. Zou.


Scientists improve a land surface model to better simulate the carbon-nitrogen flux


More information:
Liwei Zou. Does regional air–sea coupling improve the simulation of the summer monsoon over the western North Pacific in the WRF4 model?, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters (2020). DOI: 10.1080/16742834.2020.1819755

Citation:
Air-sea coupling improves the simulation of the western North Pacific summer monsoon (2020, November 25)
retrieved 25 November 2020
from https://phys.org/news/2020-11-air-sea-coupling-simulation-western-north.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.


Speak Your Mind

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Get in Touch

350FansLike
100FollowersFollow
281FollowersFollow
150FollowersFollow

Recommend for You

Oh hi there 👋
It’s nice to meet you.

Subscribe and receive our weekly newsletter packed with awesome articles that really matters to you!

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

You might also like

To Beat Covid-19, Scientists Try to ‘See’ the Invisible...

But the CDC illustration is far from the full picture. For one thing, each...

Everything You Need To Know About Crispr Gene Editing

Before long, DuPont bought the Danish company that Barrangou worked for and began using...