Tropical Pacific SST Predictions with a Coupled GCM

contributed by Ben P. Kirtman and J. Shukla

Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies

The Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies (COLA) has recently developed an anomaly coupled prediction system, using sophisticated dynamical ocean and atmosphere models, that produces skillful forecasts of the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomaly (SSTA) up to 1.5 years in advance. The details of this coupled prediction system are described by Kirtman et al. (1997) and a brief description of the overall skill of the 30 hindcast predictions was given in the March 1995 issue of this Bulletin. The atmospheric component is the COLA atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM, Kinter et al., 1988) that includes a state-of-the-art land surface model (Xue et al., 1991) and physical parameterizations of radiation, convection, and turbulence. The AGCM is a global spectral model that is horizontally truncated at triangular wave number 30 and has 18 unevenly spaced sigma levels in the vertical. The oceanic component is a Pacific basin version of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) ocean model (Pacanowski et al., 1993). In the ocean model there are 20 levels in the vertical with 16 levels in the upper 400 m. The zonal resolution is 1.5 degrees longitude and 0.5 degrees latitude between 10N and 10S. Further details of the ocean model are provided in Huang and Schneider (1995).

We have separately tested the ocean and atmosphere component models in order to evaluate their performance when forced by observed boundary conditions and improvements have been made that are also incorporated into the coupled prediction system. The effects of atmospheric model zonal wind stress errors have been ameliorated by using the zonal wind at the top of the boundary layer to redefine the zonal wind stress at the surface (Huang and Shukla, 1997). We have also developed an iterative procedure for further adjusting the zonal wind stress, based on the simulated SSTA errors (Kirtman and Schneider, 1996) that improves initial conditions for coupled forecasts (Kirtman et al., 1997).

Fig. 1 shows the NINO3 time series of the predicted SSTA for three forecasts initialized on, September 1, 1998, October 1, 1998 and November 1, 1998, respectively. Each forecast is run for 18 months. The evolution of all three forecasts are fairly consistent in calling for continued cooling in the eastern Pacific through the spring of 1999. The SSTA begins to return to normal in the early summer of 1999 reaching normal by late fall 1999 or early winter 1999-2000. Compared to the previous three forecasts, the maximum cold anomaly has shifted from January-February 1999 to May 1999.

The ensemble mean (average of all three forecasts) horizontal structure of the predicted SSTA for winter 1998-99, spring 1999 and summer 1999 are shown in the three panels of Fig. 2, respectively. During the winter season (DJF98-99) and the spring season (MAM99) cold anomalies dominate most of the tropical Pacific basin. The decay of the cold anomalies during the summer season (JJA99) can be easily detected in the third panel of Fig. 2.

Acknowledgments: This work was supported under NOAA grant NA26-GP0149 and NA46-GP0217 and NSF grant ATM-93-21354.

References:

Huang, B., and J. Shukla, 1997: An examination of AGCM simulated surface stress and low level winds over the tropical Pacific ocean. Mon. Wea. Rev., 125, 985-998.

Huang, B., and E. K. Schneider, 1995: The response of an ocean general circulation model to surface wind stress produced by an atmospheric general circulation model. Mon. Wea. Rev., 123, 3059-3085

Kinter, J. L. III, J. Shukla, L. Marx and E. K. Schneider, 1988: A simulation of winter and summer circulations with the NMC global spectral model. J. Atmos. Sci., 45, 2486-2522.

Kirtman, B. P., J. Shukla, B. Huang, Z. Zhu, E. K. Schneider, 1997: Multiseasonal predictions with a coupled tropical ocean global atmosphere system. Mon. Wea. Rev., 125, 789-808.

Kirtman, B. P., and E. K. Schneider, 1996: Model based estimates of equatorial Pacific wind stress. J. Climate, 9, 1077-1091.

Pacanowski, R. C., K. Dixon, A. Rosati, 1993: The GFDL modular ocean model users guide, version 1.0. GFDL Ocean Group Tech. Rep., No., 2.

Xue, Y., P. J. Sellers, J. L. Kinter III, and J. Shukla, 1991: A simple biosphere model for global climate studies. J. Climate, 4, 345-364.

Figure 1: Time evolution of the NINO3 SSTA forecast. The solid curve corresponds to the forecast initialized in September 1998, the dashed curve corresponds to the October 1998 forecast and the dotted curve corresponds to the November 1998 forecast.

Figure 2: The ensemble mean SSTA. The top panel shows the predicted ensemble mean averaged from December 1998 to February 1999. The middle panel shows the predicted ensemble mean SSTA averaged from March 1999 to May 1999. The bottom panel shows the ensemble mean averaged over June 1999 to August 1999.