Evaluation of the ERA-40 air–sea surface heat flux spin-up

Ocean models depend strongly on surface fluxes. When computed from atmospheric models, fluxes are affected by spin-up, i.e. they increase (or decrease) with forecast length. Such behavior may bias ocean models. The European Centre for Medium Range Forecasts (ECMWF) 40-year re-analysis (ERA-40) has been used to quantify short-range spin-ups of radiative and turbulent heat fluxes. Fluxes are compared as differences between two runs with the same initialization time. This method allows flux analysis over short-range forecasts as a function of distance from the initialization time. Results indicate that (i) latent heat flux spin-up increases with time but levels off after 24 h; (ii) sensible and radiative flux spin-ups remain constant after 6 h; (iii) regional spin-up of turbulent fluxes are systematic and can be larger than 30% for sensible heat but never exceeds 15% for latent heat; (iv) spin-up depends upon the season. The same analysis has been carried out with the ECMWF 15-year re-analysis (ERA-15); spin-ups in ERA-40 have been generally smaller than those in ERA-15.