RESEARCH ARTICLE

Volume 5,Issue 2

Fall 204

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3 October 2018

Test and evaluation of asimple parameterization to enhance air-sea coupling in a global coupled model

Fanghua Xu1*
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1 Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, and Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
SOM 2023 , 3(2), 1; https://doi.org/10.18063/som.v3i2.739
© 2023 by the Author(s). Licensee Whioce Publishing, USA. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

A simple temperature-dependent wind stress scheme is implemented in National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Earth System Model (CESM), aiming to enhance positive wind stress and sea surface temperature (SST) correlation in SST-frontal regions. A series of three-year coupled experiments are conducted to determine a proper coupling coefficient for the scheme based on the agreement of surface wind stress and SST at oceanic mesoscale between model simulations and observations. Afterwards, 80-year simulations with/without the scheme are conducted to explore its effects on simulated ocean states and variability. The results show that the new scheme indeed improves the positive correlation between SST and wind stress magnitude near the large oceanic fronts. With more realistic surface heat flux and wind stress, the global SST biases are reduced. The global ocean circulation represented by barotropic stream function exhibits a weakened gyre circulation close to the western boundary separation, in agreement with previous studies. The simulation of equatorial Pacific current system is improved as well. The overestimated El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) magnitude in original CESM is reduced by ~30% after using the new scheme with an improved period. 

Keywords
SST front
Air-sea interaction
Wind stress
CESM
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Conflict of interest
No conflict of interest.
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