Using Commercial Aircraft Meteorological Data to Assess the Heat Budget of the Convective Boundary Layer Over the Santiago Valley in Central Chile

The World Meteorological Organization Aircraft Meteorological Data Relay (AMDAR) programme refers to meteorological data gathered by commercial aircraft and made available to weather services. It has become a major source of upper-air observations whose assimilation into global models has greatly improved their performance. Near busy airports, AMDAR data generate semi-continuous vertical profiles of temperature and winds, which have been utilized to produce climatologies of atmospheric-boundary-layer (ABL) heights and general characterizations of specific cases. We analyze 2017–2019 AMDAR data for Santiago airport, located in the centre of a $$40\times 100$$ 40 × 100 km$$^2$$ 2 subtropical semi-arid valley in central Chile, at the foothills of the Andes. Profiles derived from AMDAR data are characterized and validated against occasional radiosondes launched in the valley and compared with routine operational radiosondes and with reanalysis data. The cold-season climatology of AMDAR temperatures reveals a deep nocturnal inversion reaching up to 700 m above ground level (a.g.l.) and daytime warming extending up to 1000 m a.g.l. Convective-boundary-layer (CBL) heights are estimated based on AMDAR profiles and the daytime heat budget of the CBL is assessed. The CBL warming variability is well explained by the surface sensible heat flux estimated with sonic anemometer measurements at one site, provided advection of the cool coastal ABL existing to the west is included. However, the CBL warming accounts for just half of the mean daytime warming of the lower troposphere, suggesting that rather intense climatological diurnal subsidence affects the dynamics of the daytime valley ABL. Possible sources of this subsidence are discussed.

Subsurface warm biases in the tropical Atlantic and their attributions to the role of wind forcing and ocean vertical mixing

Realistic ocean subsurface simulations of thermal structure and variation are critically important to the success in climate prediction and projection; currently, substantial systematic subsurface biases still exist in the state-of-the-art ocean and climate models. In this paper, subsurface biases in the tropical Atlantic (TA) are investigated by analyzing simulations from OMIP and conducting POP2-based ocean-only experiments. The subsurface biases are prominent in almost all OMIP simulations, characterized by two warm bias patches off the equator. By conducting two groups of POP2-based ocean-only experiments, two potential origins of the biases are explored, including uncertainties in wind forcing and vertical mixing parameterization, respectively. It is illustrated that the warm bias near 10° N can be slightly reduced by modulating prescribed wind field, and the warm biases over the entire basin are significantly reduced by reducing background diffusivity in the ocean interior in ways to match observations. By conducting heat budget analysis, it is found that the improved subsurface simulations are attributed to the enhanced cooling effect by constraining the vertical mixing diffusivity in terms of the observational estimate, implying that the overestimation of vertical mixing is primarily responsible for the subsurface warm biases in the TA. Since the climate simulation is very sensitive to the vertical mixing parameterization, more accurate representations of ocean vertical mixing are clearly needed in ocean and climate models.

A diagnostic analysis of MONEX-1979 onset vortex over the Arabian Sea

Based on MONEX-,1979 data over the Arabian Sea, the paper analyses observationally the structure, development and movement of a vortex which formed during onset of the monsoon around mid-June near the coast of Kerala developed into a cyclonic storm at mid-sea and moved towards the coast of Oman to die out there Heat budget computations bring out the differential behaviour of the different quadrants of the disturbance and appear to highlight the contrasting features between the northwestern and the other quadrants in regard to vertical. distributions of diabatic heating, local temperature tendency thermal advection and adiabatic heating or cooling. The study reveals an interaction of the vortex with two eastward-propagating subtropical westerly troughs which might have contributed significantly to its explosive development (decay) through warm (cold) advection. Both barotropic and baroclinic energy conversions appear to supply energy to the storm; though there appears to be a dominance of one over the other at different stages of development and at different heights. It seems likely that condensation heating also contributed to development of the storm.

Variations in intensity and structure of a westward-propagating monsoon depression

The study deals with a monsoon depression which developed over the Bay of Bengal, moved westward across central India and turned into a mid-tropospheric disturbance (MTD) over the northeastern : corner of the Arabian Sea. Its interactions with the thermal fields associated with the basic monsoon, subtropical westerly troughs and a new depression over the Bay of Bengal are examined. Evidence suggests the involvement of all the three factors in causing the observed variations in its intensity and structure. The low pressure system turned into a mid-tropospheric disturbance when it re-entered the warm sector of the basic monsoon field and received increased warm advection from the north to the west of its centre and cold advection from the south to the east in mid-troposphere. The importance of thermal advection is confirmed by computation of a heat budget. The role of condensation heating is also briefly discussed.

Reduction in meridional heat export contributes to recent Indian Ocean warming

Since 2000, the Indian Ocean has warmed more rapidly than the Atlantic or Pacific. Air-sea fluxes alone cannot explain the rapid Indian Ocean warming, which has so far been linked to an increase in temperature transport into the basin through the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF). Here, we investigate the role that the heat transport out of the basin at 36°S plays in the warming. Adding the heat transport out of the basin to the ITF temperature transport into the basin, we calculate the decadal mean Indian Ocean heat budget over the 2010s. We find that heat convergence increased within the Indian Ocean over 2000-2019. The heat convergence over the 2010s is the same order as the warming rate, and thus the net air-sea fluxes are near zero. This is a significant change from previous analyses using trans-basin hydrographic sections from 1987, 2002, and 2009, which all found divergences of heat. A two year time series shows that seasonal aliasing is not responsible for the decadal change. The anomalous ocean heat convergence over the 2010s compared to previous estimates is due to changes in ocean currents at both the southern boundary (33%) and the ITF (67%). We hypothesize that the changes at the southern boundary are linked to an observed broadening of the Agulhas Current, implying that temperature and velocity data at the western boundary are crucial to constrain heat budget changes.

Autonomous System for Lake Ice Monitoring

Continuous monitoring of ice cover belongs to the key tasks of modern climate research, providing up-to-date information on climate change in cold regions. While a strong advance in ice monitoring worldwide has been provided by the recent development of remote sensing methods, quantification of seasonal ice cover is impossible without on-site autonomous measurements of the mass and heat budget. In the present study, we propose an autonomous monitoring system for continuous in situ measuring of vertical temperature distribution in the near-ice air, the ice strata and the under-ice water layer for several months with simultaneous records of solar radiation incoming at the lake surface and passing through the snow and ice covers as well as snow and ice thicknesses. The use of modern miniature analog and digital sensors made it possible to make a compact, energy efficient measurement system with high precision and spatial resolution and characterized by easy deployment and transportation. In particular, the high resolution of the ice thickness probe of 0.05 mm allows to resolve the fine-scale processes occurring in low-flow environments, such as freshwater lakes. Several systems were tested in numerous studies in Lake Baikal and demonstrated a high reliability in deriving the ice heat balance components during ice-covered periods.

Wie genau sind universelle Funktionen bei stark stabiler Schichtung?

<p>Der Datensatz des <em>Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) </em>Experimentes 1997/98 wird häufig für die Berechnung von universellen Funktionen für stabile Schichtung herangezogen. Für eine nicht-iterative Modellierung (Louis-Ansatz) können diese Funktionen neu berechnet werden. Allerdings haben diese Funktionen viele empirische Faktoren, die sich aus der Anpassung an den ursprünglichen Datensatz ergeben. Ein interessantes Ergebnis bei der Analyse der Daten des SHEBA-Experimentes ist, dass die Daten für die oberen Messpunkte des Experiments einer lokalen Skalierung mit den klassischen universellen Funktionen folgen, während die Daten der unteren Messpunkte eine große Streuung aufweisen. Somit könnten für den oberen Teil des Profils ein allgemein üblicher Louis-Ansatz verwendet werden. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass unter besonderen Bedingungen der untere Teil des Profils vom oberen Teil entkoppelt ist, wie es bei anderen Experimenten bereits gezeigt werden konnte. Ein einfacher Test für die Entkopplung durch Vergleich der experimentellen Daten mit einem hydrodynamischen Modellansatzes wird in der Präsentation gezeigt. Es wird daher empfohlen, den SHEBA Datensatz auf Entkopplung zu testen und eine wahrscheinlich viel einfachere universelle Funktion zu erstellen. Allerdings ist der Umgang mit entkoppelten Situationen noch im Bereich der Forschung. Es ist allerdings für die meisten Fälle zu erwarten, dass bei Berücksichtigung der Entkopplung kleinere Flüsse bestimmt würden.</p>

Mechanisms of asymmetry in sea surface temperature anomalies associated with the Indian Ocean Dipole revealed by closed heat budget

The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) is an interannual climate mode of the tropical Indian Ocean. Although it is known that negative sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the eastern pole during the positive IOD are stronger than positive SST anomalies during the negative IOD, no consensus has been reached on the relative importance of various mechanisms that contribute to this asymmetry. Based on a closed mixed layer heat budget analysis using a regional ocean model, here we show for the first time that the vertical mixing plays an important role in causing such asymmetry in SST anomalies in addition to the contributions from the nonlinear advection and the thermocline feedback proposed by previous studies. A decomposition of the vertical mixing term indicates that nonlinearity in the anomalous vertical temperature gradient associated with subsurface temperature anomalies and anomalous vertical mixing coefficients is the main driver of such asymmetry. Such variations in subsurface temperature are induced by the anomalous southeasterly trade winds along the Indonesian coast that modulate the thermocline depth through coastal upwelling/downwelling. Thus, the thermocline feedback contributes to the SST asymmetry not through the vertical advection as previously suggested, but via the vertical mixing.

Oceanic Response to Tropical Cyclone Gonu (2007) in the Gulf of Oman and the Northern Arabian Sea: Estimating Depth of the Mixed Layer Using Satellite SST and Climatological Data

The category 5-equivalent tropical Cyclone Gonu (2007) was the strongest cyclone to enter the northern Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman. The impact of this cyclone on the sea surface temperature (SST) cooling and deepening of the mixed layer was investigated herein using an optimally interpolated (OI) cloud-free sea surface temperature (SST) dataset, climatological profiles of water temperature, and data from Argo profilers. SST data showed a maximum cooling of 1.7–6.5 °C during 1–7 June 2007 over the study area, which is similar to that of slow- to medium-moving cyclones in previous studies. The oceanic heat budget equation with the assumptions of the dominant turbulent mixing effect was used to establish relationships between SST and mixed layer depth (MLD) for regions that were directly affected by cyclone-induced turbulent mixing. The relationships were applied to the SST maps from satellite to obtain maps of MLD for 1–7 June, when Gonu was over the study area. Comparing with the measured MLD from Argo data showed that this approach estimated the MLDs with an average error of 15%, which is an acceptable amount considering the convenience of this approach in estimating MLD and the simplifications applied in the heat budget equation. Some inconsistencies in calculating MLD were attributed to use of climatological temperature profiles that may not have appropriately represented the pre-cyclone conditions due to pre-existing cold/warm core eddies. Estimation of the diapycnal diffusion that quantified the turbulent mixing across the water column showed consistent temporal and spatial variations with the calculated MLDs.