Heat balance and eddies in the Peru-Chile current system

The Peru-Chile current System (PCS) is a region of persistent biases in global climate models. It has strong coastal upwelling, alongshore boundary currents, and mesoscale eddies. These oceanic phenomena provide essential heat transport to maintain a cool oceanic surface underneath the prevalent atmospheric stratus cloud deck, through a combination of mean circulation and eddy flux. We demonstrate these behaviors in a regional, quasi-equilibrium oceanic model that adequately resolves the mesoscale eddies with climatological forcing. The key result is that the atmospheric heating is large (>50 W m^?2) over a substantial strip >500 km wide off the coast of Peru, and the balancing lateral oceanic flux is much larger than provided by the offshore Ekman flux alone. The atmospheric heating is weaker and the coastally influenced strip is narrower off Chile, but again the Ekman flux is not sufficient for heat balance. The eddy contribution to the oceanic flux is substantial. Analysis of eddy properties shows strong surface temperature fronts and associated large vorticity, especially off Peru. Cyclonic eddies moderately dominate the surface layer, and anticyclonic eddies, originating from the nearshore poleward Peru-Chile Undercurrent (PCUC), dominate the subsurface, especially off Chile. The sensitivity of the PCS heat balance to equatorial intra-seasonal oscillations is found to be small. We demonstrate that forcing the regional model with a representative, coarse-resolution global reanalysis wind product has dramatic and deleterious consequences for the oceanic circulation and climate heat balance, the eddy heat flux in particular.     

Sensitivity of GRACE-derived estimates of groundwater-level changes in southern Ontario,Canada

Amidst changing climates, understanding the world’s water resources is of increasing importance. In Ontario, Canada, low water conditions are currently assessed using only precipitation and watershed-based stream gauges by the Conservation Authorities in Ontario and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry. Regional groundwater-storage changes in Ontario are not currently measured using satellite data by research institutes. In this study, contributions from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) data are compared to a hydrogeological database covering southern Ontario from 2003 to 2013, to determine the suitability of GRACE total water storage estimates for monitoring groundwater storage in this location. Terrestrial water storage data from GRACE were used to determine monthly groundwater storage (GWS) anomaly values. GWS values were also determined by multiplying groundwater-level elevations (from the Provincial Groundwater Monitoring Network wells) by specific yield. Comparisons of GRACE-derived GWS to well-based GWS data determined that GRACE is sufficiently sensitive to obtain a meaningful signal in southern Ontario. Results show that GWS values produced by GRACE are useful for identifying regional changes in groundwater storage in areas with limited available hydrogeological characterization data. Results also indicate that GRACE may have an ability to forecast changes in groundwater storage, which will become useful when monitoring climate shifts in the near future.     

What shapes mesoscale wind anomalies in coastal upwelling zones?

Observational studies have shown that mesoscale variations in sea surface temperature may induce mesoscale variations in wind. In eastern subtropical upwelling regions such as the California coast, this mechanism could be of great importance for the mean state and variability of the climate system. In coastal regions orography also creates mesoscale variations in wind, and the orographic effect may extend more than 100?km offshore. The respective roles of SST/wind links and coastal orography in shaping mesoscale wind variations in nearshore regions is not clear. We address this question in the context of the California Upwelling System, using a high-resolution regional numerical modeling system coupling the WRF atmospheric model to the ROMS oceanic model, as well as additional uncoupled experiments to quantify and separate the effects of SST/wind links and coastal orography on mesoscale wind variations. After taking into account potential biases in the representation of the strength of SST/wind links by the model, our results suggest that the magnitude of mesoscale wind variations arising from the orographic effects is roughly twice that of wind variations associated with mesoscale SST anomalies. This indicates that even in this region where coastal orography is complex and leaves a strong imprint on coastal winds, the role of SST/winds links in shaping coastal circulation and climate cannot be neglected.     

Nonlinear measurement function in the ensemble Kalman filter

ABSTRACT The optimal Kalman gain was analyzed in a rigorous statistical framework. Emphasis was placed on a comprehensive understanding and interpretation of the current algorithm, especially when the measurement function is nonlinear. It is argued that when the measurement function is nonlinear, the current ensemble Kalman Filter algorithm seems to contain implicit assumptions： the forecast of the measurement function is unbiased or the nonlinear measurement function is linearized. While the forecast of the model state is assumed to be unbiased, the two assumptions are actually equivalent. On the above basis, we present two modified Kalman gain algorithms. Compared to the current Kalman gain algorithm, the modified ones remove the above assumptions, thereby leading to smaller estimated errors. This outcome was confirmed experimentally, in which we used the simple Lorenz 3-component model as the test-bed. It was found that in such a simple nonlinear dynamical system, the modified Kalman gain can perform better than the current one. However, the application of the modified schemes to realistic models involving nonlinear measurement functions needs to be further investigated.