HR: 17:40h
AN: A34A-06 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: Role of Air-Sea Heat Fluxes in Seasonal Climate and Variability of the Eastern Tropical Atlantic
AU: * Yu, L
EM: lyu@whoi.edu
AF: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, PO DEPT, MS#21 360 Woods Hole Rd, Woods Hole, MA 02543 United States
AB: The eastern tropical Atlantic exhibits a pronounced annual cycle in SST, in tropical deep convection, and in both zonal and meridional components of surface winds. It has been well known that ocean dynamical processes driven by monsoonal winds play an important role in the annual cooling of the sea surface in the eastern equatorial Atlantic and in influencing air-sea interactions between the Atlantic cold tongue and African monsoon. However, much less have been studied about the effect of the monsoon winds on air-sea heat fluxes and how much air-sea heat fluxes contribute to the seasonal climate and variability of the eastern tropical Atlantic. This study investigates the structure and variability of air-sea heat fluxes in the tropical Atlantic and its different effects on the atmosphere-ocean interactions in the eastern and western basins. The study utilizes an objectively analyzed air-sea heat flux product newly developed at WHOI, the ISCCP surface radiation dataset, and NCEP reanalysis and ECMWF ReAnalysis-40 (ERA40) flux products. The impact of data quality on physical analysis will also be discussed.
UR: http://www.whoi.edu/science/PO/people/lyu/res-flux.html
DE: 3339 Ocean/atmosphere interactions (0312, 4504)
DE: 3374 Tropical meteorology
DE: 4215 Climate and interannual variability (3309)
DE: 4572 Upper ocean processes
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting