High Resolution Numerical Modelling of the Atmosphere and Ocean

ISBN-13: 9781493900169 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 293 str.

Kevin Hamilton;Wataru Ohfuchi

Opis

Many key issues in dynamical meteorology and physical oceanography depend on interactions among diverse spatial scales. Atmospheric examples are the role of small-scale gravity waves in the zonal-mean momentum balance in the middle atmosphere, the role of tropical cyclones in the large scale energy and momentum balances of the troposphere, or even the direction of spectral cascades of variance in the mesoscale. In the ocean issues of this type include: understanding the detailed physics of the very narrow boundary currents that occur along many coastlines, and the role of mesoscale eddies in determining the strength of the large-scale circulations and meridional ocean heat transports. Truly comprehensive observational diagnostic studies of these issues are essentially impossible, since they would require the global observational overage at extremely high spatial resolution. An alternative is to study such issues in high resolution models that may span 3 or more orders of magnitude in terms of spatial scales. There has been a great deal of progress recently on development and application of such fine resolution models. This had been spurred in part by the recent availability of exceptionally powerful computers. Noteworthy in this respect is the Earth Simulator in Yokohama, Japan, which commenced operations in 2002 and provides a peak performance of 40 Terraflops, but competitive supercomputers for scientific applications are now becoming available in the USA and Europe as well. There has developed in the last few years an increased understanding of the scientific value of results from very high resolution comprehensive numerical simulations. This book documents the first international meeting focused specifically on high-resolution atmospheric and oceanic modeling held at the Earth Simulator Center. Rather than producing a standard conference proceedings it includes papers written by invited speakers at the meeting reporting on their most exciting recent results involving high resolution modeling.

Spis treści

-Gilbert Brunet (Meteorological Service of Canada): Vortex Rossby wave in hurricanes: On the need for a high resolution Numerical Weather Prediction Strategy -Kazuhisa, Tsuboki (Nagoya University, Japan): High-resolution simulation experiments for typhoons using the cloud-resolving model on the Earth Simulator -Bill Skamarock (National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA): High-resolution numerical weather prediction: Are our models adequate? -Akira Noda (Japan Meteorological Research Institute): Global warming simulated with a super high resolution global climate model -Takeshi Enomoto (Earth Simulator Center, Japan): Meso-scale resolving simulations of global atmosphere -Agathe Untch (European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts, UK): High-resolution experimentation at ECMWF -Kevin Hamilton (University of Hawaii, USA): Gravity waves in high resolution atmospheric GCM simulations -John McGregor (CSIRO, Australia): Simulations using the conformal-cubic atmospheric model -Isidoro Orlanski (NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, USA): Why the simulation of mid latitude storm tracks requires high resolution -Nobumasa Komori (Earth Simulator Center, Japan): High-resolution simulation of coupled atmospheric-ocean system using the CFES model -Jing-Jia Luo (Frontier Research Center for Global Change, Japan): Seasonal climate predictability in a high-resolution coupled Ocean-Atmosphere GCM -Keiko Takahashi (earth Simulator Center, Japan): Impact of high resolution interaction between ocean and atmosphere -Hideharu Sasaki (Earth Simulator Center, Japan): Eddy-resolving simulation in the world ocean using the ocean GCM fort he Earth Simulator -Yukio Tanaka (Frontier Research Center for Global Change, Japan): Evaluation of eddy effect in the Southern Ocean using high resolution ocean model -George Nurser (Southhampton University, UK): Diagnosis of theupper ocean in the OCCAM high resolution ocean GCM

O autorze

Kevin Hamilton is a professor in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Team Leader for " Regional Impacts of Global Environmental Change" Research at the International Pacific Research Center.

Wataru Ohfuchi has held a research scientist position with the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan. Currently, he is the Group Leader of the Atmospheric and Ocean Simulation Research Group at the Earth Simulator Center.

Blurb

All numerical simulations of atmospheric and oceanic phenomena are limited by the finite spatial resolution, generally requiring a parameterization of effects of motions on unresolved scales on those explicitly resolved. A goal of numerical modelers has been to resolve as many scales of the actual circulation as practically possible.

With the recent advent of a new generation of high-performance computing systems such as the Earth Simulator, some notable thresholds in terms of model resolution have been approached or, in some cases, surpassed. For example, recently the first long integrations with genuinely eddy-permitting global ocean models have been reported. In atmospheric studies, decadal integrations with global models with effective horizontal resolution of about 20 km have now become possible, and shorter integrations of global models that explicitly resolve scales approaching those of individual convective elements have now been reported. These developments in global models have been paralleled by efforts to apply increasingly fine resolution regional atmospheric models for both climate and short-range forecasting problems.

High Resolution Numerical Modelling of the Atmosphere and Ocean includes 15 individual papers that highlight the emerging research in atmospheric and oceanic science that has been made possible by exploiting newly available computational resources. Results from regional atmospheric, global atmospheric, global ocean, and global coupled ocean-atmosphere models are discussed in the various contributions. 

Wataru Ohfuchi is Senior Scientist and Leader of the Atmosphere and Ocean Simulation Research Group at the Earth Simulator Center of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

Kevin Hamilton is Professor of Meteorology and Leader of the Environmental Change Research Team at the International Pacific Research Center of the University of Hawaii Manoa.