Identification

Title

An assessment of the flux profile method for determining air--sea momentum and enthalpy fluxes from dropsonde data in tropical cyclones

Abstract

An analysis of the reliability of using dropsonde profile data to compute surface flux coefficients of momentum and heat is performed. Monin-Obukhov (MO) similarity theory forms the basis for the flux profile method, where mean profiles of momentum, temperature, and moisture are used to estimate surface fluxes, from which bulk flux coefficients can then be determined given surface conditions. The robustness of this method is studied in terms of its sensitivity to internal, method-based parameters, as well as the uncertainty due to variability in the measurements and errors in the estimates of surface conditions, particularly sea surface temperature. In addition, "virtual sondes" tracked through a high-resolution large-eddy simulation of an idealized tropical cyclone are used to evaluate the flux profile method’s ability to recover known surface flux coefficients given known, prescribed surface conditions; this provides a test of whether or not MO assumptions are violated and under which regions they hold. Overall, it is determined that the flux profile method is only accurate within 50% and 200% for the drag coefficient CD and enthalpy flux coefficient CK, respectively, and thus is limited in its ability to quantitatively refine model estimates beyond typically used values. Factors such as proximity to the storm center can cause significant errors in both CD and CK.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7n29zkb

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-07-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

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version of format

Constraints related to access and use

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Use constraints

Copyright 2016 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact