Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies

Abstract: Mexico and Central America (Mesoamerica) are situated in a complex and unique geographical position with the Caribbean Sea to the East and the tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean to the West. The weather patterns of this region are driven by winds, temperatures, moisture, and orography of several mountain ranges. This study finds the dates of the onset and demise of rainfall regimes on a specific day using NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) rainfall for years 1998–2012, area-averaged over land. Using NASA’s MERRA-2 Reanalysis data, we also look at the phenomenology of the triggers of the rainy season onset and demise on the daily time-scale instead of the monthly scales used by previous studies.
We find that the Mesoamerican Rainy Season can be distinguished into two parts: the Early Spring Rainfall (ESR) associated with light rains and the Late Spring Rainfall (LSR) associated with heavy rains. Two algorithms are used to obtain these rainy season distinctions. A new algorithm was developed during this study, called the SLOPE algorithm, to calculate when the rain rates first start to increase. In the second method, the daily cumulative anomalies of rainfall are compared to the climatological rainfall to find the time of onset of the heavy rains, called the MINCA algorithm. To better understand the phenomenology associated with the timing of the rainfall, we look at the monsoon trough, moisture flux convergence, moist static energy anomalies, and the weakening/strengthening of the winds associated with the Caribbean Low-Level Jet and Panama Jet.
The light rain rates begin, on average, in mid-March, approximately one month after the peak of the winter Caribbean Low-Level Jet and the Panama Jet. The ramp-up between the light rains and heavy rains is associated with a significant weakening of both jets and the northward progression of a monsoon trough off the western coast of Central America. The heavy rain rates begin, on average, in mid-May, and are associated with the timing when the Panama Jet goes to near zero magnitude and a strong monsoon trough in the eastern Pacific. At the demise of the rainfall, approximately in mid-November, the Panama Jet strengthens again, the total moisture flux convergence decreases significantly, and the monsoon trough retreats southward and eastward. The results of this study have positive implications in agriculture and water resources for Mesoamerica, as this information may help resource managers better plan and adapt to climate variability.

Abstract: Global maps of the mesoscale eddy available potential energy (EAPE) field at a depth of 500 m are created using potential density anomalies in a high‐resolution 1/12.5° global ocean model. Maps made from both a free‐running simulation and a data‐assimilative reanalysis of the HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) are compared with maps made by other researchers from density anomalies in Argo profiles. The HYCOM and Argo maps display similar features, especially in the dominance of western boundary currents. The reanalysis maps match the Argo maps more closely, demonstrating the added value of data assimilation. Global averages of the simulation, reanalysis, and Argo EAPE all agree to within about 10%. The model and Argo EAPE fields are compared to EAPE computed from temperature anomalies in a data set of “moored historical observations” (MHO) in conjunction with buoyancy frequencies computed from a global climatology. The MHO data set allows for an estimate of the EAPE in high‐frequency motions that is aliased into the Argo EAPE values. At MHO locations, 15–32% of the EAPE in the Argo estimates is due to aliased motions having periods of 10 days or less. Spatial averages of EAPE in HYCOM, Argo, and MHO data agree to within 50% at MHO locations, with both model estimates lying within error bars observations. Analysis of the EAPE field in an idealized model, in conjunction with published theory, suggests that much of the scatter seen in comparisons of different EAPE estimates is to be expected given the chaotic, unpredictable nature of mesoscale eddies.

Abstract: Since 2005, the Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic System (SAMOS) initiative has been collecting, quality-evaluating, distributing, and archiving underway navigational, meteorological, and oceanographic observations from research vessels. Herein we describe the procedures for acquiring ship and instrumental metadata and the one-minute interval observations from 44 research vessels that have contributed to the SAMOS initiative from 2005 to 2017. The overall data processing workflow and quality control procedures are documented along with data file formats and version control procedures. The SAMOS data are disseminated to the user community via web, FTP, and Thematic Real-time Environmental Distributed Data Services from both the Marine Data Center at the Florida State University and the National Centers for Environmental Information, which serves as the long-term archive for the SAMOS initiative. They have been used to address topics ranging from air-sea interaction studies, the calibration, evaluation, and development of satellite observational products, the evaluation of numerical atmospheric and ocean models, and the development of new tools and techniques for geospatial data analysis in the informatics community. Maps provide users the geospatial coverage within the SAMOS dataset, with a focus on the Essential Climate/Ocean Variables, and recommendations are made regarding which versions of the dataset should be accessed by different user communities.

Abstract: Are there important differences between reanalysis data and familiar observations and measurements? If so, what are they? This essay evaluates four possible answers that relate to: the role of inference, reliance on forecasts, the need to solve an ill-posed inverse problem, and understanding of errors and uncertainties. The last of these is argued to be most significant. The importance of characterizing uncertainties associated with results—whether those results are observations or measurements, analyses or reanalyses, or forecasts—is emphasized.

Abstract: The interaction between tropical convective heating and thermally forced circulation is investigated using a global dry primitive-equation model with the parameterization of wave-conditional instability of the second kind (CISK). It is demonstrated that deep convective heating can hardly sustain itself through the moisture convergence at low levels regardless of the fraction of immediate consumption of converged moisture. In contrast, when the fraction is large, shallow convective heating and its forced circulation exhibit preferred growth of small scales. As the “CISK catastrophe” mainly comes from the instantaneous characters of moisture-convection feedback in the conventional wave-CISK, a noninstantaneous wave-CISK is proposed, which highlights the accumulation-consumption (AC) time scale for the convective heating accumulation and/or the converged moisture consumption. In the new wave-CISK, once moisture is converged, the release of latent heat takes place gradually within an AC time scale. In this sense, convective heating is not only related to the instantaneous moisture convergence at the current time, but also to that which occurred in the past period of the AC time scale. The noninstantaneous wave-CISK could guarantee the occurrence of convective heating and/or moisture convergence at larger scales, and then favor the growth of long waves, and thus solve the problem of CISK catastrophe. With the new wave-CISK and AC time scale of 2 days, the simulated convective heating-driven system bears a large similarity to that of the observed convectively coupled Kelvin wave.