School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Impact of Different Wind Representations on Resonant Ocean Near-inertial Motions in the Gulf of Mexico

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2022

Abstract

This study investigates the resonated diurnal impact of the surface wind forcing from several atmospheric wind products, including CCMP (Cross-Calibrated Multi-Platform), ERA Interim, NCEP-2 (NCEP-DOE AMIP-II Reanalysis), MERRA (Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Application), NARR (Northern American Regional Reanalysis) and NAM (North American Mesoscale Forecast System), on the wind-driven near-inertial ocean motions in the northern Gulf of Mexico by numerical simulation, and in comparison, with NDBC buoy surface observed winds. Our analyses show that the near-inertial wind power input, which can affect vertical mixing in the water column, is closely associated with the variability of land-sea breeze by various wind products. In comparison with buoy observations in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the MERRA has the worst land-sea breeze representation, while the NCEP2 and CCMP, which are chosen to represent the coarsest and medium–high horizontal resolution, have the best performance. We further show that by comparison of the buoy data, that the near-inertial wind power input derived from all the wind products is underestimated by 30–50% approximately.

Publication Title

Ocean Science Journal

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12601-021-00049-5

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS