Bohua Huang

Warm Events in the Tropical Atlantic

Abstract Sea surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Atlantic Ocean undergoes anomalous warming events of 1°–2°C every few years. The warm anomalies reach their maximum strength in Northern Hemisphere summer, when equatorial upwelling normally brings cold thermocline water to the surface. By compositing surface observations from a 28-year record, we are able to identify consistent features in anomalies of SST and winds. The composites show that the SST anomalies in northern summer are confined to the eastern equatorial region, with reduced zonal winds to the west and reduced northward trade winds to the east. Accompanying these changes in winds are enhanced convection near the equator caused by a southward shift and intensification of the intertropical convergence zone. Later in the year, SST south of the equator becomes elevated. As a result, by spring of the year following the equatorial anomaly, convection in the western side of the basin is much higher than normal. To understand the ocean dynami...

Multiseasonal Predictions with a Coupled Tropical Ocean–Global Atmosphere System

The Center for Ocean‐Land‐Atmosphere Studies anomaly coupled prediction system, using a sophisticated dynamical model of the tropical Pacific Ocean and the global atmosphere, is described. The resolution of the component models is moderate, with the atmospheric spectral model truncated at triangular total wavenumber 30 and 18 vertical levels. The ocean model is a Pacific Basin model with 0.58 latitude and 1.58 longitude resolution in the waveguide and 20 vertical levels. The performance of the uncoupled component models motivates the anomaly coupling strategy and has led to the development of a simple empirical technique for converting the 850-mb zonal wind into a zonal surface stress that is used in the prediction experiments described here. In developing ocean initial conditions, an iterative procedure that assimilates the zonal wind stress based on the simulated sea surface temperature anomaly error is applied. Based on a sample of 78 18-month hindcasts, the predictions have useful skill in the Nino-3 region for at least 12 months. The systematic error of the predictions is shown to be relatively small because the ocean initial conditions are in reasonable equilibrium with the ocean

Tropical Cyclone Climatology in a 10-km Global Atmospheric GCM: Toward Weather-Resolving Climate Modeling

AbstractNorthern Hemisphere tropical cyclone (TC) activity is investigated in multiyear global climate simulations with the ECMWF Integrated Forecast System (IFS) at 10-km resolution forced by the observed records of sea surface temperature and sea ice. The results are compared to analogous simulations with the 16-, 39-, and 125-km versions of the model as well as observations.In the North Atlantic, mean TC frequency in the 10-km model is comparable to the observed frequency, whereas it is too low in the other versions. While spatial distributions of the genesis and track densities improve systematically with increasing resolution, the 10-km model displays qualitatively more realistic simulation of the track density in the western subtropical North Atlantic. In the North Pacific, the TC count tends to be too high in the west and too low in the east for all resolutions. These model errors appear to be associated with the errors in the large-scale environmental conditions that are fairly similar in this reg...

Intrinsic Ocean–Atmosphere Variability of the Tropical Atlantic Ocean

The tropical Atlantic variability is composed of three major patterns of significant importance for variability and predictability of climate in the Atlantic sector. They are the southern tropical Atlantic (STA) pattern with anomalous sea surface temperature (SST) fluctuations expanding from the Angolan coast to the central equatorial ocean, the northern tropical Atlantic (NTA) pattern centered near the northern African coast, and the southern subtropical Atlantic (SSA) pattern in the open subtropical ocean. Previous studies have suggested that both the regional air‐sea coupling and remote forcing from outside the basin may affect the formation of these patterns and their variability. A specially designed global coupled ocean‐ atmosphere general circulation model, which eliminates air‐sea feedback outside the Atlantic, reproduces the major features of these observed patterns realistically. This suggests that these patterns originate from air‐sea coupling within the Atlantic Ocean or by the oceanic responses to atmospheric internal forcing, in which there

An Analysis of the Nonstationarity in the Bias of Sea Surface Temperature Forecasts for the NCEP Climate Forecast System (CFS) Version 2

AbstractFor long-range predictions (e.g., seasonal), it is a common practice for retrospective forecasts (also referred to as the hindcasts) to accompany real-time predictions. The necessity for the hindcasts stems from the fact that real-time predictions need to be calibrated in an attempt to remove the influence of model biases on the predicted anomalies. A fundamental assumption behind forecast calibration is the long-term stationarity of forecast bias that is derived based on hindcasts.Hindcasts require specification of initial conditions for various components of the prediction system (e.g., ocean, atmosphere) that are generally taken from a long reanalysis. Trends and discontinuities in the reanalysis that are either real or spurious can arise due to several reasons, for example, the changing observing system. If changes in initial conditions were to persist during the forecast, there is a potential for forecast bias to depend over the period it is computed, making calibration even more of a challen...

Ensemble ENSO hindcasts initialized from multiple ocean analyses

n n In this study, the impact of ocean initial conditions (OIC) on the prediction skill in the tropical Pacific Ocean is examined. Four sets of OIC are used to initialize the 12-month hindcasts of the tropical climate from 1979 to 2007, using the Climate Forecast System, version 2 (CFSv2), the current operational climate prediction model at the National Centers for Environmental Predictions (NCEP). These OICs are chosen from four ocean analyses produced by the NCEP and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). For each hindcast starting from a given OIC, four ensemble members are generated with different atmosphere and land initial states. The predictive skill in the tropical Pacific Ocean is assessed based on the ensemble mean hindcasts from each individual as well as multiple oceanic analyses. To reduce the climate drift from various oceanic analyses, an anomaly initialization strategy is used for all hindcasts. The results indicate that there exists a substantial spread in the sea surface temperature (SST) prediction skill with different ocean analyses. Specifically, the ENSO prediction skill in terms of the anomaly correlation of Nino-3.4 index can differ by as much as 0.1-0.2 at lead times longer than 2 months. The ensemble mean of the predictions initialized from all four ocean analyses gives prediction skill equivalent to the best one derived from the individual ocean analysis. It is suggested that more accurate OIC can improve the ENSO prediction skill and an ensemble ocean initialization has the potential of enhancing the skill at the present stage.

Interferential Impact of ENSO and PDO on Dry and Wet Conditions in the U.S. Great Plains

Abstract The influence of the El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) interference on the dry and wet conditions in the Great Plains of the United States has been examined using monthly observational datasets. It is shown that both ENSO and PDO can generate a similar pattern of atmospheric and oceanic anomalies over the eastern part of the North Pacific and western North America that has significant impact on the climate over the Great Plains. Furthermore, the relationship between ENSO–PDO and climate anomalies in the Great Plains is intensified when ENSO and PDO are in phase (El Nino and warm PDO or La Nina and cold PDO). On average, anomalies over the Great Plains favor wet (dry) conditions when both ENSO and PDO are in the positive (negative) phase. However, when ENSO and PDO are out of phase, the relationship is weakened and the anomalies over the Great Plains tend toward neutral. Without ENSO, PDO alone does not affect the North American climate significantly. The re...

Ocean Data Assimilation, Initialization, and Predictions of ENSO with a Coupled GCM

Abstract A scheme for making seasonal to interannual predictions of El Nino–Southern Oscillation with a coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model that incorporates subsurface ocean measurements in the initial conditions is described. Anomaly initial conditions are used in order to reduce initial shock and climate drift. The ocean component of the prediction model has a nearly global domain, and the coupled model does not employ anomaly coupling or empirical statistical corrections. Initial conditions for the ocean were obtained from a near-global ocean analysis produced by an ocean data assimilation system. The assimilation system uses a variationally formulated optimal interpolation method to analyze oceanic fields from temperature observations and a first-guess field provided by integrating a global ocean general circulation model. The period of the analysis was 1986 through 1992. The anomaly initial conditions for the ocean were generated by adding the anomalies of the assimilated fields from ...

An analysis of warm pool and cold tongue El Ninos: air-sea coupling processes, global influences, and recent trends

The differences in tropical air–sea interactions and global climate connection as well as the hindcast skills for the warm pool (WP) and cold tongue (CT) El Niños are investigated based on observed, (re)analyzed, and model hindcast data. The robustness of observed global climate connection is established from the model simulations. Lastly, variations of atmosphere and ocean conditions in the recent decades, and their possible connection with the frequency increase of the WP El Niño are discussed. Consistent with previous results, our individual case study and composite results suggest that stronger (weaker) and more eastward extended (westward confined) westerly wind along the equatorial Pacific in early months of a year is associated with active (suppressed) air–sea interaction over the cold tongue/the Intertropical Convergence Zone complex, as well as more (less) intensive oceanic thermocline feedback, favoring the CT (WP) El Niño development. The preceding westerly wind signal and air-sea interaction differences may be responsible for the predication skill difference with higher (lower) overall hindcast skill for the CT (WP) El Niño in the Climate Forecast System of National Centers for Environmental Prediction. Our model experiments show that, in addition to the tropics, the eastern Pacific, North America and North Atlantic are the major regions having robust climate differences between the CT and WP El Niños. Nevertheless, the climate contrasts seem not robust over the Eurasian continent. Also, the frequency increase of the WP El Niño in the recent decades may not be directly connected with the linear trend of the tropical climate.

Ocean Wave Dynamics and El Niño

Abstract The response of an ocean general circulation model to specified wind stress is used to understand the role of ocean wave propagation in the evolution of El Nino events in sea surface temperature (SST) in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. In a control experiment the ocean model reproduces observed equatorial Pacific interannual variability in response to forcing by the observed wind stress. The ocean model is then forced with the same wind stress but with the time evolution of the wind stress forcing reversed. An analysis of the anomalies from the annual cycle in these two experiments delineates the parts of the response that are in equilibrium with and out of equilibrium with the wind stress forcing. In the western equatorial Pacific the SST anomalies are in equilibrium with the wind stress anomalies. In the eastern equatorial Pacific the SST anomalies are not in equilibrium with the wind stress anomalies but rather tend toward equilibrium with the upper-ocean beat content anomalies. The experiment d...