Data collected in three Californian estuaries indicate that hypersaline conditions exist during the dry summers typical of a Mediterranean climate. The generalised seasonal and longitudinal hydrographic structures are described and explained. It is argued that this seasonal hypersalinity is common and that it represents a major class of estuaries. The observed accumulation of salt indicates surprisingly long residence times in small basins which have free exchange with the ocean. This semi-isolation of the inner basin leads to a large build-up or severe depletion of nutrients, pollutants and plankton in these systems. Of concern are the trends to increase pollutant loading in the same systems that are experiencing an increase in residence times owing to freshwater extraction in the watershed. 相似文献
A right annual cycle is of critical importance for a model to improve its seasonal prediction skill. This work assesses the performance of the Grid-point Atmospheric Model of IAP LASG (GAMIL) in retrospective prediction of the global precipitation annual modes for the 1980 2004 period. The annual modes are gauged by a three-parameter metrics: the long-term annual mean and two major modes of annual cycle (AC), namely, a solstitial mode and an equinoctial asymmetric mode. The results demonstrate that the GAMIL one-month lead prediction is basically able to capture the major patterns of the long-term annual mean as well as the first AC mode (the solstitial monsoon mode). The GAMIL has deficiencies in reproducing the second AC mode (the equinoctial asymmetric mode). The magnitude of the GAMIL prediction tends to be greater than the observed precipitation, especially in the sea areas including the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal (BOB), and the western North Pacific (WNP). These biases may be due to underestimation of the convective activity predicted in the tropics, especially over the western Pacific warm pool (WPWP) and its neighboring areas. It is suggested that a more accurate parameterization of convection in the tropics, especially in the Maritime Continent, the WPWP and its neighboring areas, may be critical for reproducing the more realistic annual modes, since the enhancement of convective activity over the WPWP and its vicinity can induce suppressed convection over the WNP, the BOB, and the South Indian Ocean where the GAMIL produces falsely vigorous convections. More efforts are needed to improve the simulation not only in monsoon seasons but also in transitional seasons when the second AC mode takes place. Selection of the one-tier or coupled atmosphere-ocean system may also reduce the systematic error of the GAMIL prediction. These results offer some references for improvement of the GAMIL seasonal prediction skill. 相似文献
Interdecadal variations of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signals and annual cycles appearing in the sea surface temperature (SST) and zonal wind in the equatorial Pacific during 1950–1997 are studied by wavelet, empirical orthogonal function (EOF) and singular value decomposition (SVD) analyses. The typical timescale of ENSO is estimated to be about 40 months before the late 1970s and 48–52 months after that; the timescale increased by about 10 months. The spatial pattern of the ENSO signal appearing in SST also changed in the 1970s; before that, the area of strong signal spread over the extratropical regions, while it is confined near the equator after that. The center of the strongest signal shifted from the central and eastern equatorial Pacific to the South American coast at that time. These SST fluctuations near the equator are associated with fluctuations of zonal wiond, whose spatial pattern also shifted considerably eastward at that time. In the eastern equatorial Pacific, amplitudes of annual cycles of SST are weak in El Niño years and strong in La Niña years. This relation is not clear, however, in the 1980s and 1990s. 相似文献