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Thirty-two-year ocean–atmosphere coupled downscaling of global reanalysis over the Intra-American Seas

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Abstract

This study examines the oceanic and atmospheric variability over the Intra-American Seas (IAS) from a 32-year integration of a 15-km coupled regional climate model consisting of the Regional Spectral Model (RSM) for the atmosphere and the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) for the ocean. It is forced at the lateral boundaries by National Centers for Environmental Prediction-Department of Energy (NCEP-DOE R-2) atmospheric global reanalysis and Simplified Ocean Data Assimilation global oceanic reanalysis. This coupled downscaling integration is a free run without any heat flux correction and is referred as the Regional Ocean–Atmosphere coupled downscaling of global Reanalysis over the Intra-American Seas (ROARS). The paper examines the fidelity of ROARS with respect to independent observations that are both satellite based and in situ. In order to provide a perspective on the fidelity of the ROARS simulation, we also compare it with the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR), a modern global ocean–atmosphere reanalysis product. Our analysis reveals that ROARS exhibits reasonable climatology and interannual variability over the IAS region, with climatological SST errors less than 1 °C except along the coastlines. The anomaly correlation of the monthly SST and precipitation anomalies in ROARS are well over 0.5 over the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, Western Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Oceans. A highlight of the ROARS simulation is its resolution of the loop current and the episodic eddy events off of it. This is rather poorly simulated in the CFSR. This is also reflected in the simulated, albeit, higher variance of the sea surface height in ROARS and the lack of any variability in the sea surface height of the CFSR over the IAS. However the anomaly correlations of the monthly heat content anomalies of ROARS are comparatively lower, especially over the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. This is a result of ROARS exhibiting a bias of underestimation (overestimation) of high (low) clouds. ROARS like CFSR is also able to capture the Caribbean Low Level Jet and its seasonal variability reasonably well.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from NOAA (NA12OAR4310078, NA10OAR4310215, NA11OAR4310110), and USDA (027865). Supercomputing was provided by TACC via XSEDE. Two anonymous reviewers helped to improve the manuscript.

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  1. Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Haiqin Li & Vasubandhu Misra

  2. Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Vasubandhu Misra

  3. Florida Climate Institute, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Vasubandhu Misra

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  1. Haiqin Li
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Correspondence to Haiqin Li.

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Li, H., Misra, V. Thirty-two-year ocean–atmosphere coupled downscaling of global reanalysis over the Intra-American Seas. Clim Dyn 43, 2471–2489 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2069-9

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