HR: 15:30h
AN: A23E-07    [Abstracts]
TI: Evaporation flux variability in the tropical Pacific from observations and climate models
AU: * Romanou, A
EM: ar2235@columbia.edu
AF: Dept of Applied Math and Applied Phys., Columbia University, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, United States
AU: Clayson, C
EM: clayson@met.fsu.edu
AF: Dept of Meteorology, Florida State University, 404 Love Building/Meteorology - 4520, Tallahassee, FL 32306, United States
AU: Rossow, W B
EM: wbrossow@ccny.cuny.edu
AF: Department of Electrical Engineering The City College of City University of New York, 140th St and Convent Avenue, New York, NY 10031, United States
AU: Roehrig, R
EM: romain.roehrig@polytechnique.org
AF: Ecole Polytechnique, 68 Boulevard Jean Rostand 45800 Saint Jean de Braye, Paris, 45800, France
AB: Turbulent fluxes (evaporation, winds and humidity) at the surface of the ocean from several satellite-derived observational datasets (WHOI, HOAPS, J-OFURO and GSSTF2) are inter-compared and evaluated against in situ measurements from the TAO buoy record in the Tropical Pacific Ocean. Similarly, turbulent flux variability from 10 state-of-the-art climate models that went into the recent IPCC report (AR4) is assessed compared to the observational datasets. We focused on longer (inter-annual) and shorter (intra-seasonal) scales over the period 1989-2000 and on how the relationship between the flux and the state variables is captured in the different datasets and models. For the period of interest, we find that all models overestimate evaporative fluxes in the Warm Pool region by about 30W/m² whereas the observational uncertainty is 20W/m² and the bias arises due to exceptionally dry conditions the models consistently display in this region. In the Niño3 region modeled variability over longer time scales better agrees with the observations, although we do not expect models to capture the observed record of El Niño events. Shorter scale variability is not well captured in models, due to unresolved scales such that of the tropical instability waves.
DE: 3309 Climatology (1616, 1620, 3305, 4215, 8408)
DE: 3360 Remote sensing
DE: 4504 Air/sea interactions (0312, 3339)
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly