Spatial and Temporal Characterization of Sea Surface Temperature Response to Tropical Cyclones*

Mei, Wei; Pasquero, Claudia

doi:10.1175/jcli-d-12-00125.1

Cited by 96 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…In the weeks following the passage of the TC, the induced SSHAs propagate to the left of the storm track, consistent with the westward propagation of the SST anomalies (SSTAs) (16,28) due to an increase in the environmental rotation rate with latitude (29). The SSHAs also dissipate as the flow crosses the SSH isolines before the current comes into geostrophic balance and as air-sea heat fluxes warm the cold surface anomalies.…”

Section: Fig 1 and Si Appendixsupporting

confidence: 52%

“…After the rapid increase of SSH in the first month after the passage of the storm, found for all intensity groups, the SSHA associated with tropical depressions changes very little whereas that associated with stronger TCs keeps increasing. We interpret this as evidence that the cold SSTA in the wake of the tropical depressions has already completely disappeared by day 30, thus shutting off the anomalous air-sea heat fluxes, whereas the SST in the wake of stronger TCs is still below normal conditions, allowing anomalous air-sea heat fluxes to continue warming the ocean (28). The remaining negative SSHA associated with tropical depressions is eliminated during the winter season when the mixed-layer depth increases beyond the maximum depth of the subsurface cold anomaly.…”

Section: Fig 1 and Si Appendixmentioning

confidence: 89%

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Sea surface height evidence for long-term warming effects of tropical cyclones on the ocean

Mei

Primeau

McWilliams

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Tropical cyclones have been hypothesized to influence climate by pumping heat into the ocean, but a direct measure of this warming effect is still lacking. We quantified cyclone-induced ocean warming by directly monitoring the thermal expansion of water in the wake of cyclones, using satellite-based sea surface height data that provide a unique way of tracking the changes in ocean heat content on seasonal and longer timescales. We find that the long-term effect of cyclones is to warm the ocean at a rate of 0.32 ± 0.15 PW between 1993 and 2009, i.e., ∼23 times more efficiently per unit area than the background equatorial warming, making cyclones potentially important modulators of the climate by affecting heat transport in the ocean-atmosphere system. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that the rate of warming increases with cyclone intensity. This, together with a predicted shift in the distribution of cyclones toward higher intensities as climate warms, suggests the ocean will get even warmer, possibly leading to a positive feedback.S trong winds associated with tropical cyclones (TCs) increase air-sea heat fluxes, favoring the intensification of storms, and generate vigorous vertical mixing in the upper ocean, stirring warm surface waters with colder waters below (1-6). The wake produced by the passage of TCs is thus characterized by a surface cold anomaly and a subsurface warm anomaly (1-3, 6, 7). After the TC passage, the sea surface cold anomaly dissipates quickly (8-10), due in part to anomalous air-sea heat fluxes (9, 11), whereas the subsurface warm anomaly is believed to persist over a much longer period (12). This has led to the suggestion that the net longterm effect of TCs is to pump heat into the ocean (13-16). Such a flux of heat into the low-latitude ocean has been proposed to be an important modulator of local and remote climate (12,(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22).During the past decade or so, several studies have been devoted to estimating the magnitude of this heating effect, using sea surface temperature (SST) data (13-16). However, owing to a lack of subsurface temperature observations, these studies relied upon many assumptions that led to large and poorly quantified uncertainties (SI Appendix, SI Results). Furthermore, it is currently highly debated how much (if any) of the estimated warming survives beyond winter season when the deepening of the mixed layer cools the upper ocean. To avoid the ideological and methodological challenges inherent in the previous work, we take a more straightforward approach that was first proposed by Emanuel (13, 23) and quantify the TC-induced warming effect on the ocean by estimating the thermal expansion of water in the wake of Northern Hemisphere TCs, using satellite-derived sea surface height (SSH) data (24) together with tropical cyclone best-track data (25,26). Combining these two datasets allows us to track the SSH anomalies (SSHAs) around the TC-generated wake beyond the winter season and thus provides a clear picture of the temporal evolution of the TC-induc...

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Section: Fig 1 and Si Appendixsupporting

confidence: 52%

Section: Fig 1 and Si Appendixmentioning

confidence: 89%

Sea surface height evidence for long-term warming effects of tropical cyclones on the ocean

Mei

Primeau

McWilliams

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

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“…This is of course not true, and a cold wake of reduced SST is often observed behind large tropical cyclones due to the mixing of colder water at depth to the surface (Mei and Pasquero 2013;Price 1981). This serves as a negative feedback on storm intensity (Cione and Uhlhorn 2003).…”

Section: Uniform High-resolution Global Atmospheric Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

High-Resolution Multi-decadal Simulation of Tropical Cyclones

Wehner

Reed

Zarzycki

2017

Hurricanes and Climate Change

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Recent advances in high-performance computing technologies are enabling multiple climate modeling groups to perform global multi-decadal simulations at tropical cyclone-permitting resolutions. This chapter discusses the developing state of the art of such high-resolution modeling. These global atmospheric models, with horizontal resolutions in the 10-50 km range, simulate strong gradients in temperature and moisture far more realistically than contemporary mainstream climate models at coarser resolution. With these models, simulated tropical cyclones exhibit a surprising degree of realism in terms of both the physical characteristics of individual storms and their long-term statistical behavior. Experience with the Community Atmospheric Model version 5 is used as an example to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this new class of climate models.

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“…Previous research suggests that sea surface cooling is enhanced for slow-moving cyclones (e.g., Price 1981;Mei and Pasquero 2013). Firstly, we investigate the cyclones with varying translation speeds, ranging from 1 to 12 m/s (12 cases in total).…”

Section: Varying Cyclone Parametersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local inertial oscillations in the surface ocean generated by time-varying winds

Chen

Polton

et al. 2015

Ocean Dynamics

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A new relationship is presented to give a review study on the evolution of inertial oscillations in the surface ocean locally generated by time-varying wind stress. The inertial oscillation is expressed as the superposition of a previous oscillation and a newly generated oscillation, which depends upon the time-varying wind stress. This relationship is employed to investigate some idealized wind change events. For a wind series varying temporally with different rates, the induced inertial oscillation is dominated by the wind with the greatest variation. The resonant wind, which rotates anticyclonically at the local inertial frequency with time, produces maximal amplitude of inertial oscillations, which grows monotonically. For the wind rotating at non-inertial frequencies, the responses vary periodically, with wind injecting inertial energy when it is in phase with the currents, but removing inertial energy when it is out of phase. The wind rotating anticyclonically with time is much more favorable to generate inertial oscillations than the cyclonic rotating wind. The wind with a frequency closer to the inertial frequency generates stronger inertial oscillations. For a diurnal wind, the induced inertial oscillation is dependent on latitude and is most significant at 30°. This relationship is also applied to examine idealized moving cyclones. The inertial oscillation is much stronger on the right-hand side of the cyclone path than on the left-hand side (in the northern hemisphere). This is due to the wind being anti-cyclonic with time on the right-hand side, but cyclonic on the other side. The inertial oscillation varies with the cyclone translation speed. The optimal translation speed generating the greatest inertial oscillations is 2 m/s at the latitude of 10°and gradually increases to 6 m/s at the latitude of 30°.

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Spatial and Temporal Characterization of Sea Surface Temperature Response to Tropical Cyclones*

Cited by 96 publications

References 63 publications

Sea surface height evidence for long-term warming effects of tropical cyclones on the ocean

Sea surface height evidence for long-term warming effects of tropical cyclones on the ocean

High-Resolution Multi-decadal Simulation of Tropical Cyclones

Local inertial oscillations in the surface ocean generated by time-varying winds

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