Interannual variability of sea surface temperatures in ocean general circulation model

Abstract

The evolution of annual cycle of sea surface temperature (SST) as simulated by a stretched coordinate ocean general circulation model is examined here with two surface heat flux formulations. The first heat flux scheme is the standard Haney formulation and the other scheme is just a modification of the former where a term using gaussian distribution of apparent atmospheric temperature has been added. The interannual behavior of simulated SST anomalies show their quite realistic evolution for both the formulations in tropical ocean. The simulations were performed by forcing the ocean model with European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) wind stress, ambient temperature, precipitation and evaporation from Atmospheric Model Inter-comparison Project (AMIP) archives. Major errors, common to both simulations

<span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:" times="" new="" roman";="" mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";color:black;mso-ansi-language:en-in;="" mso-fareast-language:en-in;mso-bidi-language:hi"="" lang="EN-IN">reported here, pertains to systematic colder temperatures than the observed SST in the equatorial ocean in the western Pacific Ocean. The appearance of unrealistic tropical cooling trend present during almost all the years of the simulation period, <span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height: 115%;font-family:" times="" new="" roman";mso-fareast-font-family:hiddenhorzocr;="" color:black;mso-ansi-language:en-in;mso-fareast-language:en-in;mso-bidi-language:="" hi"="" lang="EN-IN">seems <span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%; font-family:" times="" new="" roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" roman";="" color:black;mso-ansi-language:en-in;mso-fareast-language:en-in;mso-bidi-language:="" hi"="" lang="EN-IN">to be a problem needing further refinement in the model physics.</span></span></span>