HR: 1340h
AN: GC13B-1240    [Abstracts]
TI: Estimating Ocean Heat Transport Attributable to Tropical Cyclone Activity Using ERA-40 Data
AU: * Sriver, R L
EM: rsriver@purdue.edu
AF: Purdue University, 550 Stadium Mall Dr., West Lafayette, IN 47907-2051 United States
AU: Huber, M
EM: huberm@purdue.edu
AF: Purdue University, 550 Stadium Mall Dr., West Lafayette, IN 47907-2051 United States
AB: Ocean mixing is an important physical process because it drives ocean heat transport (OHT) and primary productivity. Tropical cyclones (TCs) have shown to be efficient ocean mixers, the extent of which can be characterized by the cold wakes left behind these storms. Preliminary work proposes that TCs may be responsible for an amount of mixing sufficient, by itself, to account for all modern OHT (Emanuel 2001, 2002, 2003). Here we analyze ECMWF ERA-40 TC-induced sea surface temperature and surface air temperature anomalies during the past 40 years to estimate the TC contribution to mean annual OHT. TC winds from several data sets are also analyzed, and trends in the annually integrated winds and OHT are compared. TC-winds and mixing correlate well, which suggests that future increases in TC strength and frequency may result in increased OHT.
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (0429, 3309)
SC: Global Climate Change [GC]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005