Three-Dimensional Temperature Field Change in the South China Sea during Typhoon Kai-Tak (1213) Based on a Fully Coupled Atmosphere–Wave–Ocean Model

Abstract

Studying the sea–air interaction between the upper ocean and typhoons is crucial to improve our understanding of heat and momentum exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean. There is a strong heat flux exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean during the impact of a typhoon, and the physical fields, such as the wind field, wave field, flow field, and SST field, also interact with each other. A fully coupled Atmosphere–Wave–Ocean model in the South China Sea was established by the mesoscale atmospheric model WRF, wave model SWAN, and the regional ocean model ROMS based on the COAWST model system. Typhoon Kai-tak was simulated using this fully coupled model and some other coupled schemes. In this paper, the variation of sea surface temperature (SST) and ocean subsurface temperature caused by Typhoon Kai-tak is analyzed by the fully coupled model, and the basic characteristics of the response of the upper ocean to the typhoon are given. The simulation results demonstrate that the fully coupled WRF-SWAN-ROMS model shows that the typhoon passes through the sea with obvious cooling. In the cold eddy region, the sea surface temperature cools 4 to 5 °C, and the cooling zone is concentrated on the right side of the track. The change of sea surface temperature lags more than 12 h behind the change of sea surface height. The decrease of SST on the left side of the track was relatively small: ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 °C. The disturbance of typhoon causes the subsurface water to surge to the surface, changes the temperature distribution of the surface, and causes the mixing layer to deepen about 40 m to 60 m. The simulation results reveal the temporal and spatial distribution of sea temperature and mixed layer depth. The sea surface temperature field has an asymmetrical distribution in space and has a lag in time. The heat exchange at the air–sea interface is very strong under the influence of the typhoon. The heat exchange between the air and sea is divided into latent heat and sensible heat, and the latent heat generated by water vapor evaporation plays a dominant role in the heat exchange at the air–sea interface, which shows that the heat carried by the vaporization of the sea surface is one of the important factors for the decrease of sea temperature under the influence of the typhoon.

Response of Coastal Water in the Taiwan Strait to Typhoon Nesat of 2017

“…The three model components communicate with each other through the Model Coupling Toolkit [34]. Although widely used in many realistic case studies (e.g., [47][48][49]), application of COAWST in Chinese near-shore waters is limited (e.g., [50][51][52]).…”

Hybrid improved empirical mode decomposition and BP neural network model for the prediction of sea surface temperature

“…Sea surface temperature (SST) is a main factor in the interaction between the ocean and the atmosphere (Wiedermann et al, 2017;He et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2019a), and it characterizes the combined results of ocean heat (Buckley et al, 2014;Griffies et al, 2015;Wu et al, 2019b) and dynamic processes (Takakura et al, 2018). It is a very important parameter for climate change and ocean dynamics processes, such as sea-air heat fluxes and water vapor exchange.…”

Numerical Investigation of Fresh and Salt Water Distribution in the Pearl River Estuary during a Typhoon Using a Fully Coupled Atmosphere-Wave-Ocean Model

“…The typhoon is one of the most serious natural disasters that affects the coastal ocean environment in China [1][2][3], especially in the eastern and southern estuaries, such as the Yangtze River Estuary [4][5][6] and the Pearl River Estuary [7][8][9]. During a typhoon, the coupling of various dynamic factors, such as wind, waves, storm surges, and river runoff, greatly enhances the mass and energy exchange of various interfaces in the ocean and is accompanied by heavy rain and storm runoff on the surface [10].…”

“…During a typhoon, the coupling of various dynamic factors, such as wind, waves, storm surges, and river runoff, greatly enhances the mass and energy exchange of various interfaces in the ocean and is accompanied by heavy rain and storm runoff on the surface [10]. Scouring can transport a large amount of minerals from the land to an estuary offshore, causing sudden changes in the water quality of the estuary, which may have an important impact on the marine ecological environment [1,9,[11][12][13].…”

“…In this study, a fully coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model [1,7] was used to simulate the salinity changes in the upper ocean under the influence of a typhoon. The coupled WRF-SWAN-ROMS model in the South China Sea was established based on the model coupling toolkit (MCT), the mesoscale atmospheric model WRF, the wave model SWAN and the regional ocean model ROMS in this study.…”