TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of the Amazon-Orinoco River plume on enthalpy flux and air-sea interaction within caribbean sea tropical cyclones
AU - Rudzin, Johna E.
AU - Shay, Lynn K.
AU - Cruz, Benjamin Jaimes De La
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. The authors acknowledge the generous funding support by NASA (Grant NNX15AG43G). GPS-dropsonde data are provided courtesy of the NOAA/ AOML/Hurricane Research Division in Miami, Florida. The Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST) Multiscale Ultra-High-Resolution (MUR) SST data were obtained from the NASA EOSDIS Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California (https://doi.org/10.5067/GHGMR-4FJ01). The authors also acknowledge the three reviewers and Josh Wadler (UM/RSMAS), whose reviews improved this manuscript. The authors also acknowledge Mark Powell (RMS-H*Wind), who generously provided high-resolution H*Wind data for this study.
PY - 2019/3/1
Y1 - 2019/3/1
N2 - The influence of the Amazon-Orinoco River plume in the Caribbean Sea on latent and sensible heat flux (enthalpy flux) and tropical cyclone (TC) intensity is investigated for Hurricanes Ivan (2004), Emily (2005), Dean (2007), and Felix (2007) using dropwindsonde data, satellite sea surface temperature (SST), and the SMARTSclimatology. Relationships among enthalpy fluxes, ocean heat content relative to the 26°C isotherm depth (OHC), and SST during storm passage are diagnosed. Results indicate that sea surface cooling in the river plume, a low-OHC region, is comparable to that in the warm eddy region, which has high OHC. An isothermal layer heat budget shows that upper-ocean cooling in the river plume can be explained predominantly by sea-to-air heat flux, rather than by entrainment flux from the thermocline. The latter two findings suggest that relatively large upper-ocean stratification in the plume regime limited entrainment cooling, sustaining SST and enthalpy flux. Inspection of atmospheric variables indicates that deep moderate wind shear is prevalent, and equivalent potential temperature is enhanced over the river plume region for most of these storms. Thus, sustained surface fluxes in this region may have provided warm, moist boundary layer conditions, which may have helped these storms to rapidly intensify even over relatively low-OHC waters and moderate shear. These findings are important because several Caribbean Sea TCs, including these cases, have been underforecast with respect to intensity and/or rapid intensifications, yet minimal upperocean observations exist to understand air-sea interaction during TCs in the salinity-stratified Amazon- Orinoco plume regime.
AB - The influence of the Amazon-Orinoco River plume in the Caribbean Sea on latent and sensible heat flux (enthalpy flux) and tropical cyclone (TC) intensity is investigated for Hurricanes Ivan (2004), Emily (2005), Dean (2007), and Felix (2007) using dropwindsonde data, satellite sea surface temperature (SST), and the SMARTSclimatology. Relationships among enthalpy fluxes, ocean heat content relative to the 26°C isotherm depth (OHC), and SST during storm passage are diagnosed. Results indicate that sea surface cooling in the river plume, a low-OHC region, is comparable to that in the warm eddy region, which has high OHC. An isothermal layer heat budget shows that upper-ocean cooling in the river plume can be explained predominantly by sea-to-air heat flux, rather than by entrainment flux from the thermocline. The latter two findings suggest that relatively large upper-ocean stratification in the plume regime limited entrainment cooling, sustaining SST and enthalpy flux. Inspection of atmospheric variables indicates that deep moderate wind shear is prevalent, and equivalent potential temperature is enhanced over the river plume region for most of these storms. Thus, sustained surface fluxes in this region may have provided warm, moist boundary layer conditions, which may have helped these storms to rapidly intensify even over relatively low-OHC waters and moderate shear. These findings are important because several Caribbean Sea TCs, including these cases, have been underforecast with respect to intensity and/or rapid intensifications, yet minimal upperocean observations exist to understand air-sea interaction during TCs in the salinity-stratified Amazon- Orinoco plume regime.
KW - Air-sea interaction
KW - Rivers
KW - Salinity
KW - Sea surface temperature
KW - Surface fluxes
KW - Tropical cyclones
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063684166&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85063684166&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1175/MWR-D-18-0295.1
DO - 10.1175/MWR-D-18-0295.1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85063684166
VL - 147
SP - 931
EP - 950
JO - Monthly Weather Review
JF - Monthly Weather Review
SN - 0027-0644
IS - 3
ER -