editorial air-sea interactions and marine...

Hindawi Publishing CorporationAdvances in MeteorologyVolume 2013, Article ID 162475, 3 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/162475

EditorialAir-Sea Interactions and Marine Meteorology

Lian Xie,1 Bin Liu,1 John Morrison,2 Huiwang Gao,3 and Jianhong Wang4

1 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA2University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC 28409, USA3Ocean University of China, Qingdao, Shandong 266100, China4Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210044, China

Correspondence should be addressed to Lian Xie; [email protected]

Received 10 November 2013; Accepted 10 November 2013

Copyright © 2013 Lian Xie et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, whichpermits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Marine meteorology is a subfield of meteorology which dealswith the monitoring, analysis, modeling, and forecastingof the weather and associated oceanographic conditions inmarine and coastal environments. The fundamental pro-cesses which distinguish marine meteorology from othersubfields of meteorology are the interactions between theocean and the atmosphere. The challenges in advancing theunderstanding and forecasting of marine weather lie in thecomplexities of differentmarine environments from the openocean to the coastal zone and from tropical islands to high-latitudemarginal seas and the broad dynamic scales in air-seainteractions from microscales to local, regional, and globalscales.

This special issue publishes a collection of 12 articlescovering a wide range of topics of growing importance in ourunderstanding of “air-sea interactions and marine meteorol-ogy” from tropical cyclones to polar lows, from the impact ofclimate change on the marine environment in the vicinity ofthe Galapagos islands to deep convections over the Barbadosisland, from the processes that occur within the ocean skinlayer to the entire mixed layer, from typhoons affecting EastAsia to landfalling hurricanes affecting the US southeastcoast, and from weather support for summer Olympics andParalympics to weather analysis on oil platforms. Thesearticles reflect the recent advances and applications in “air-seainteractions and marine meteorology” from a set of uniqueangles.

The subject of tropical cyclones has always been a trendytopic in both air-sea interactions and marine meteorology. Atotal of five articles included in this special issue dealt with

tropical cyclones. Ever since the discovery of the decreasingtrend of drag coefficient at high wind conditions by Powelland his colleagues in 2003 (Nature 422, Pages 279–283),the subject of drag coefficient in typhoon and hurricaneenvironments has been vigorously studied. In B. Wang etal.’s paper, the drag coefficients were estimated using datafrom wind towers during typhoons Hagupit and Nuri. Theyalso examined the relationship between drag coefficient andatmospheric stability and found that the drag coefficientdecreased when atmosphere stability changed from weaklystable or unstable to neutral, and although the relationshipsbetween drag coefficient and wind speed were similar toother researchers’ results, the wind thresholds were differentdue to different observation sites. In N. Huang et al.’s paper,the buoy observation network in the East China Sea isused to assist the determination of the characteristics of thestructure of two tropical cyclones in August 2012. The buoy-measured wind and pressure time series were also used tocorrect the intensity of one of the typhoons “Damrey” initiallydetermined by China Meteorological Administration. H. Xuet al. also studied two tropical cyclones (Saomai and Bopha)in 2006 but focused on the mutual influence between themusing a numerical model. They concluded that the impactof Tropical Storm Bopha on Saomai is regarded as a binarytropical cyclone interaction in which moisture transport isa pivotal process. The interaction between Typhoon Choi-wan (2009) and the Kuroshio Extension was examined in thepaper by A. Wada et al. using a coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model. They showed that variations in preexistingoceanic conditions in the Kuroshio Extension region on the

2 Advances in Meteorology

simulated atmospheric and oceanic horizontal fields affectedthe simulated central pressure and the inner-core axisym-metric structure of the simulated typhoon differently duringthe intensification, mature, and decaying phases, but theyhad little impact on the simulated track. In Q. Tang et al.’spaper, the impact of landfalling tropical cyclones on inlandprecipitation and river stream flow was simulated by a multi-nesting numericalmodel and a hydrological river streamflowmodel. Their study demonstrated the potential applicationof using a linked numerical weather prediction model and ahydrological model to advance the simulation of inland pre-cipitation and flooding due to landfalling tropical cyclones.Their study further demonstrated that only 10% of the totaldischarge at the Tarboro, NC, gauge station, was the resultof the background synoptic pattern, with the remaining 90%of the record amount of flood water in the Tar Pamlico riverbasin due to interactions between two tropical systems, Hur-ricane Floyd and Hurricane Dennis.

Simultaneous in situ measurements of air-sea fluxestogether with parameters on both sides of the air-sea interfaceunder various marine atmospheric boundary environmentsare critical to understanding air-sea interaction processes andimproving the parameterizations of air-sea fluxes. In B. Wuet al.’s paper, the authors presented the results based on the insitumeasurements of atmospheric andoceanic variables froman oil platform in the Bohai Gulf during early mid-August in2011.They analyzed the basicmeteorological andhydrologicalcharacteristics of the Bohai Gulf, as well as the characteristicsof momentum, sensible, and latent heat fluxes during theobservational period. As a ubiquitous phenomenon at air-sea interface, the existence of sea surface waves modifies theboundary layer in both sides of the air and water interface,which in turn impacts atmosphere-wave, wave-ocean, andatmosphere-ocean interactions. One of the wave-currentinteraction processes is due to the wave-induced Coriolis-Stokes Forcing (CSF). Z. Deng et al.’s paper investigated theimpacts of the wave-induced CSF on ocean mixed layerdynamics by introducing a new CSF term based on the waveparameters simulated by the WaveWatch III (WW3) modelin the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). Theirresults show that CSF can cause noticeable influence on oceancirculation in the mixed layer. They also analyzed the seaso-nal variability caused by CSF in the mixed layer temperatureand depth. R. Nehorai et al. focused on the temperature inthe “skin” or the upper few millimeters of the ocean. Theyanalyzed the dynamics of the skin temperature of the DeadSea using continuous measurements of the skin and bulkwater temperatures and short wave and long wave radiation,with wind speed and air temperature from a buoy locatednear the center of the lake. They found that the skin, withits low thermal inertia, responds immediately to the govern-ing forcing. Thus, the air temperature with its highest corre-lation and minimal time lag is considered to be the most im-portant factor in forcing the skin layer’s temperature, whichis accomplished primarily through the sensible heat flux.

Two papers discussed the downscaling from large-scaleclimatic circulation to regional scales. In the paper by F. Chenand H. von Storch, the 6-hourly 1948–2010 NCEP reana-lyses have been dynamically downscaled for the region of the

North Pacific. With a detecting-and-tracking algorithm, theclimatology of North Pacific polar lows has been constructed.This derived climatology is consistent with the limited obser-vational evidence in terms of frequency and spatial distribu-tion. The climatology exhibits strong year-to-year variabilitybut weak decadal variability and a small positive trend. Acanonical correlation analysis describes the conditioning ofthe formation of polar lows by characteristic seasonal meanflow regimes, which favor, or limit, cold air outbreaks andupper air troughs. In the paper by Y. Liu et al., the regionalimpact of global climate change on the ocean circulationaround the Galapagos Archipelago was studied by using theHybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). The poten-tial impact of future anthropogenic global warming in theGalapagos region was examined using the HYCOM drivenby atmospheric forcings from the projections of Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report(IPCC-AR4). It was shown that the oceanic variability in theentire Galapagos region is substantially affected by globalclimate change, while with the degree of such effects beinginhomogeneous across the region. The inhomogeneous res-ponses in different regions of the Galapagos Archipelago tofuture anthropogenic global warming can be explained bythe incoherent changes of the various current systems in theGalapagos region as a result of global climate change.

Another paper dealing with marine weather in islandenvironment was by K. Whitehall et al. This paper discussedthe localized convections in Barbados islands and found thatsuch convections accounted for hazardous conditions and asignificant percentage of the island’s annual rainfall. WeatherResearch and Forecasting model (WRF) simulations are con-ducted for a rapid convective initiated and heavy precipita-tion event of 26 August 2008 over Barbados. The simulationresults from the 1 km grid resolution domain depict that theshallow topography on the island plays a significant role inenhancing convective activity under weak synoptically dis-turbed conditions. The model results also demonstrate thatthe driving forces for the development of deep convectiveclouds include low-level moisture convergence that forms asa result of the temperature differential between the land andthe ocean and forced low-level uplift as a result of the blockingby the topography. The high-resolution WRF simulationsdemonstrate their capability to accurately capture the low-level flow over the island, as well as the orientation of thedivergence and convergence patterns throughout the depth ofthe atmosphere. These results are heartening to use the WRFas a resource for studying deep convection in Barbados fordisaster managers and water resource managers.

The final paper by Y. Ma et al. presented the applicationof a marine weather support system during the 2008 BeijingOlympic and Paralympic sailing competition. The weathersupport system includes monitoring, forecasting, and net-working systems which have been constructed, evaluatedand improved through weather support for the 2006 and2007 international regattas and the 2008 international regattafor the handicapped. This is a multimodel high-resolutionsea surface wind forecast system supported by the compre-hensive observation system including weather radars, windprofile radars, buoys, automated weather stations, and other

Advances in Meteorology 3

conventional observations. Five dynamical models and twostatistical modules were included in the forecast system. Therefined forecasting system was able to provide point-specifichourly wind forecasts and the prediction of rainstorms, gales,and hailstones. Moreover, latest forecasting products, warn-ings, and weather information were communicated conve-niently and timely through a synthetic, speedy, and digital-ized network system to different customers, such as notifica-tion boards, websites, and community short messages. Thisweather support system provides a model for refined weatherforecast services to the public in China.

The twelve papers in this special issue presented a col-lection of recent research results in “air-sea interactions andmarine meteorology.” We hope they are of interest to peers.

Acknowledgment

Wewould like to thank all of the authors, reviewers, and sup-port staff from the editorial office formaking this special issuepossible.

Lian XieBin Liu

John MorrisonHuiwang Gao

Jianhong Wang

Submit your manuscripts athttp://www.hindawi.com

Hindawi Publishing Corporationhttp://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014

ClimatologyJournal of

EcologyInternational Journal of


EarthquakesJournal of


Hindawi Publishing Corporationhttp://www.hindawi.com

Applied &EnvironmentalSoil Science

Volume 2014

Mining


Journal of

Hindawi Publishing Corporation http://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014

International Journal of

Geophysics

OceanographyInternational Journal of


Journal of Computational Environmental SciencesHindawi Publishing Corporationhttp://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014

Journal ofPetroleum Engineering


GeochemistryHindawi Publishing Corporationhttp://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014

Journal of

Atmospheric SciencesInternational Journal of


OceanographyHindawi Publishing Corporationhttp://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014

Advances in


MineralogyInternational Journal of


MeteorologyAdvances in

The Scientific World JournalHindawi Publishing Corporation http://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014

Paleontology JournalHindawi Publishing Corporationhttp://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014

ScientificaHindawi Publishing Corporationhttp://www.hindawi.com Volume 2014


Geological ResearchJournal of


Geology Advances in

editorial air-sea interactions and marine...

Documents