Identification

Title

Seasonal effects of Indian Ocean freshwater forcing in a regional coupled model

Abstract

Effects of freshwater forcing from river discharge into the Indian Ocean on oceanic vertical structure and the Indian monsoons are investigated using a fully coupled, high-resolution, regional climate model. The effect of river discharge is included in the model by restoring sea surface salinity (SSS) toward observations. The simulations with and without this effect in the coupled model reveal a highly seasonal influence of salinity and the barrier layer (BL) on oceanic vertical density stratification, which is in turn linked to changes in sea surface temperature (SST), surface winds, and precipitation. During both boreal summer and winter, SSS relaxation leads to a more realistic spatial distribution of salinity and the BL in the model. In summer, the BL in the Bay of Bengal enhances the upper-ocean stratification and increases the SST near the river mouths where the freshwater forcing is largest. However, the warming is limited to the coastal ocean and the amplitude is not large enough to give a significant impact on monsoon rainfall. The strengthened BL during boreal winter leads to a shallower mixed layer. Atmospheric heat flux forcing acting on a thin mixed layer results in an extensive reduction of SST over the northern Indian Ocean. Relatively suppressed mixing below the mixed layer warms the subsurface layer, leading to a temperature inversion. The cooling of the sea surface induces a large-scale adjustment in the winter atmosphere with amplified northeasterly winds. This impedes atmospheric convection north of the equator while facilitating it in the austral summer intertropical convergence zone, resulting in a hemispheric-asymmetric response pattern. Overall, the results suggest that freshwater forcing from the river discharges plays an important role during the boreal winter by affecting SST and the coupled ocean-atmosphere interaction, with potential impacts on the broadscale regional climate.

Resource type

document

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http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76h4jdp

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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Classification of spatial data and services

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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publication

effective date

2009-12-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2009 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.

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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

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pointOfContact

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