Research Summaries

Back Aircraft Measurements for Understanding Air-Sea Coupling and Improving Coupled Model Predictions

Fiscal Year 2011
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Meteorology
Investigator(s) Wang, Qing
Sponsor Office of Naval Research (Navy)
Summary The objectives of the proposed research are
- to obtain coincident measurements of the lower atmosphere, air-sea interface, and the upper ocean adequate for coupled model evaluation;
- to better understand, the physics of air-sea coupling and improve physical parameterization of the air-sea coupled processes; and
- to evaluate uncertainties associated with application of physical parameterizations to numerical models.
These objectives will be achieved through sampling air-sea interaction processes (surface fluxes, structures and evolutions of ocean mixed layer and atmospheric boundary layer) in different convective environments (suppressed and active deep convection, and transition between them). The MJO in the Indian Ocean provides these diverse convective environments in its different phases.
Our approach is to make aircraft measurements with flight patterns designed to address various issues on coupled processes and coupled modeling as described in previous sections. The measurements will be followed by careful data reduction and calibration and in-depth data analyses. The aircraft measurements will complement ship measurements by providing an extended coverage of the high-resolution fixed-point rime series obtained from a ship. In addition, the post-TOGA COARE era airborne dropsondes can provide a detailed observation of atmospheric boundary layer, which was a shortcoming during TOGA COARE.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal