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What shapes mesoscale wind anomalies in coastal upwelling zones?

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF 0747533). Opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect NSF views. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through TeraGrid resources provided by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. We acknowledge the WRF and ROMS development groups and Hartmut Frenzel who helped with the implementation of the coupled model. NARR data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction were provided by the Data Support Section of the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. NCAR is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. QuikSCAT data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NASA Ocean Vector Winds Science Team. AMSR-E data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NASA Earth Science MEaSUREs DISCOVER Project and the AMSR-E Science Team. Data are available at http://www.remss.com. The MODIS SST data were obtained from the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. http://www.podaac.jpl.nasa.gov.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Julien Boé, Alex Hall, Xin Qu & Sarah B. Kapnick

  2. URA 1875, CNRS/CERFACS, Toulouse, France

    Julien Boé

  3. Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    François Colas, James C. McWilliams & Jaison Kurian

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  1. Julien Boé
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  2. Alex Hall
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Correspondence to Julien Boé.

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Boé, J., Hall, A., Colas, F. et al. What shapes mesoscale wind anomalies in coastal upwelling zones?. Clim Dyn 36, 2037–2049 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-011-1058-5

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