scholarly journals Surface heat fluxes from the NCEP/NCAR and NCEP/DOE reanalyses at the Kuroshio Extension Observatory buoy site

Author(s):  
Masahisa Kubota ◽  
Noriyasu Iwabe ◽  
Meghan F. Cronin ◽  
Hiroyuki Tomita
2016 ◽  
Vol 121 (9) ◽  
pp. 6874-6890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongxiao Zhang ◽  
Meghan F. Cronin ◽  
Caihong Wen ◽  
Yan Xue ◽  
Arun Kumar ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 144 (10) ◽  
pp. 3553-3567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hatsumi Nishikawa ◽  
Yoshihiro Tachibana ◽  
Yoshimi Kawai ◽  
Mayumi K. Yoshioka ◽  
Hisashi Nakamura

Simultaneous launches of radiosondes were conducted from three research vessels aligned meridionally across a sea surface temperature (SST) front on the flank of the Kuroshio Extension. The soundings carried out every 2 h over 5 days in early July 2012 provided a unique opportunity in capturing unambiguous data on anomalous easterly winds derived from a pronounced meridional SST gradient. The data indicate that a meridional contrast in surface heat fluxes from the underlying ocean enhanced the air temperature anomaly across the SST front, which was observed from the surface up to 300-m altitude. Correspondingly, high and low pressure anomalies that reached 800-m altitude formed on the north and south sides of the SST front, respectively. These temperature and pressure anomalies were maintained even during the passage of synoptic-scale disturbances. Although the free-tropospheric winds are overall westerly, winds below the 1000-m level were easterly due to geostrophic anomalies driven by the northward pressure gradient near the surface. During periods of the northerlies at the surface, especially over the warmer side of the SST front, the wind direction changed in a clockwise direction from 1500 m to the surface, in the opposite sense to the Ekman spiral. The vertical wind shear is apparently in the thermal wind balance ascribed to the meridional contrast in air temperature derived from the SST anomaly.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (19) ◽  
pp. 5206-5221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masanori Konda ◽  
Hiroshi Ichikawa ◽  
Hiroyuki Tomita ◽  
Meghan F. Cronin

Abstract Wintertime sea surface heat flux variability across the Kuroshio Extension (KE) front is analyzed using data from the Kuroshio Extension Observatory (KEO) buoy in the Kuroshio recirculation gyre south of the KE front and from the Japan Agency for Marine–Earth Science and Technology KEO (JKEO) buoy in the north of the front. The coincident data used are from periods during two winters (2007 and 2008), when both buoys had a complete suite of meteorological data. In these two winter periods, the focus of this research is on three types of typical weather patterns referred to here as the northerly wind condition, the monsoon wind condition, and the normal condition. During the northerly wind condition, latent and sensible heat fluxes were large and often varied simultaneously at both sites, whereas during the monsoon wind condition the latent heat flux at the KEO site was significantly larger than that at the JKEO site. The difference between these heat flux patterns is attributed to the different airmass transformations that occur when prevailing winds blow across the KE front versus along the front. Reanalysis products appear to reproduce these heat flux spatial patterns at synoptic scales. It is suggested that the relative frequencies of these different types of weather conditions result in anomalous spatial patterns in the heat fluxes on monthly time scales.


2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (14) ◽  
pp. 4757-4767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cunbo Han ◽  
Yaoming Ma ◽  
Xuelong Chen ◽  
Zhongbo Su

2018 ◽  
Vol 146 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hidetaka Hirata ◽  
Ryuichi Kawamura ◽  
Masaya Kato ◽  
Taro Shinoda

Abstract The active roles of sensible heat supply from the Kuroshio/Kuroshio Extension in the rapid development of an extratropical cyclone, which occurred in the middle of January 2013, were examined by using a regional cloud-resolving model. In this study, a control experiment and three sensitivity experiments without sensible and latent heat fluxes from the warm currents were conducted. When the cyclone intensified, sensible heat fluxes from these currents become prominent around the cold conveyor belt (CCB) in the control run. Comparisons among the four runs revealed that the sensible heat supply facilitates deepening of the cyclone’s central pressure, CCB development, and enhanced latent heating over the bent-back front. The sensible heat supply enhances convectively unstable conditions within the atmospheric boundary layer along the CCB. The increased convective instability is released by the forced ascent associated with frontogenesis around the bent-back front, eventually promoting updraft and resultant latent heating. Additionally, the sensible heating leads to an increase in the water vapor content of the saturated air related to the CCB through an increase in the saturation mixing ratio. This increased water vapor content reinforces the moisture flux convergence at the bent-back front, contributing to the activation of latent heating. Previous research has proposed a positive feedback process between the CCB and latent heating over the bent-back front in terms of moisture supply from warm currents. Considering the above two effects of the sensible heat supply, this study revises the positive feedback process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 149 (5) ◽  
pp. 1517-1534
Author(s):  
Benjamin Jaimes de la Cruz ◽  
Lynn K. Shay ◽  
Joshua B. Wadler ◽  
Johna E. Rudzin

AbstractSea-to-air heat fluxes are the energy source for tropical cyclone (TC) development and maintenance. In the bulk aerodynamic formulas, these fluxes are a function of surface wind speed U10 and air–sea temperature and moisture disequilibrium (ΔT and Δq, respectively). Although many studies have explained TC intensification through the mutual dependence between increasing U10 and increasing sea-to-air heat fluxes, recent studies have found that TC intensification can occur through deep convective vortex structures that obtain their local buoyancy from sea-to-air moisture fluxes, even under conditions of relatively low wind. Herein, a new perspective on the bulk aerodynamic formulas is introduced to evaluate the relative contribution of wind-driven (U10) and thermodynamically driven (ΔT and Δq) ocean heat uptake. Previously unnoticed salient properties of these formulas, reported here, are as follows: 1) these functions are hyperbolic and 2) increasing Δq is an efficient mechanism for enhancing the fluxes. This new perspective was used to investigate surface heat fluxes in six TCs during phases of steady-state intensity (SS), slow intensification (SI), and rapid intensification (RI). A capping of wind-driven heat uptake was found during periods of SS, SI, and RI. Compensation by larger values of Δq > 5 g kg−1 at moderate values of U10 led to intense inner-core moisture fluxes of greater than 600 W m−2 during RI. Peak values in Δq preferentially occurred over oceanic regimes with higher sea surface temperature (SST) and upper-ocean heat content. Thus, increasing SST and Δq is a very effective way to increase surface heat fluxes—this can easily be achieved as a TC moves over deeper warm oceanic regimes.


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