Journal article
Simulated ocean response to tropical cyclones: The effect of a novel parameterization of mixing from unbroken surface waves
L Stoney, K Walsh, AV Babanin, M Ghantous, P Govekar, I Young
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems | AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION | Published : 2017
DOI: 10.1002/2016MS000878
Abstract
Tropical cyclones dissipate large amounts of energy into the upper ocean, locally enhancing vertical mixing and cooling the sea surface. In this study, we investigate how the response of the ocean to tropical cyclones is affected by additional mixing from unbroken surface waves. This “Surface Wave Mixing” (SWM) is represented by a novel parameterization, in which the wave orbital motion contributes directly to the production of turbulent kinetic energy. The parameterization is implemented here as a modification to the k-ε turbulence scheme, used within an ocean model with 1/4° horizontal resolution (MOM5). This model is forced with idealized tropical cyclone wind fields based on observed cas..
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Grants
Awarded by Office of Naval Research
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Paul Spence and Andy Hogg of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science for the use of their 1/4 degrees horizontal resolution version of MOM5. This work benefited greatly from discussions with Mike Bueti, Isaac Ginis, Enrico Scoccimarro, and two anonymous reviewers. The authors would also like to thank the National Computing Infrastructure system on which the model simulations were performed. This work was partially funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. AVB and LS acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council Discovery grant DP130100227 and AVB from the US Office of Naval Research grant N00014-13-1-0278. The Bluelink ocean data products were provided by CSIRO. Bluelink is a collaboration involving the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Royal Australian Navy. TMI data were produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NASA Earth Sciences Program. Data are available at www.remss.com/missions/tmi. The original code and data used to produce these results may obtained on request (kevin.walsh@unimelb.edu.au).