Identification

Title

The modeling of the North Equatorial Countercurrent in the Community Earth System Model and its oceanic component

Abstract

The North Equatorial Countercurrent (NECC) simulated by a coupled ocean-atmosphere model and its oceanic component have been investigated and compared against oceanographic observations. Coupled model simulations using the Community Earth System Model version 2 are compared against ocean-ice simulations forced by the second phase of the Coordinated Ocean-ice Reference Experiments (CORE) data set. The modeled circulation biases behave differently to the west of and to the east of 120 degrees W: the CORE-forced ocean model largely underestimates the NECC transport to the west and the coupled model underestimates it to the east. Further analysis suggests that the surface wind stress and its curl is the most important forcing term for correctly simulating the NECC in both models. West of 120 degrees W, the NECC biases in the ocean model are attributed to the southward movement of the maximum easterly trade winds in the Northern Hemisphere and the associated wind stress curl (WSC) pattern; east of 120 degrees W, the NECC biases in the coupled model are attributed to the weak northward cross-equatorial winds and southwestward gap winds, which lead to a weak WSC gradient at the latitude of NECC. Further analysis confirms that the WSC biases comes mainly from the zonal wind bias, which may in turn relate to the protocol of CORE-II of adjusting reanalysis winds toward satellite data, which include the relative wind effect.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7s75kcj

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

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-02-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

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