Importance of High‐Frequency (≤30‐day) Wind Variability to the Annual Climatology of the Surface Latent Heat Flux Inferred From the Global Tropical Moored Buoy Array
2022
Yan, Yunwei | Song, Xiangzhou | Wang, Guihua | Chen, Changlin
Previous studies conducted based on reanalysis data sets have suggested that high‐frequency (≤30‐day) wind variability has a significant impact on the climatology of surface latent heat flux (LHF). The present study quantifies the impact of high‐frequency winds using field measurements derived from the global tropical moored buoy array (GTMBA) and, in turn, evaluates the performance of existing reanalysis products on capturing the role of these high‐frequency winds. The buoy observations demonstrate that high‐frequency winds at the n‐day (n = 1, 2, …, 30) timescale make a positive contribution to the annual climatology of LHF by nonlinearly enhancing the mean surface wind speed. Furthermore, this contribution increases as the timescale decreases, with maxima occurring at the 1‐day (subdaily) timescale. The subdaily winds contribute 4.6 W m⁻², on average over all GTMBA sites. The largest contribution exceeds 10.0 W m⁻² over the equatorial western Pacific Ocean. Hourly reanalysis products underestimate the contribution of the high‐frequency winds at timescales shorter than about a week, especially at the subdaily timescale, which is underestimated by approximately 50–60%. This finding suggests that an improvement in the performance of subdaily wind variability is needed to improve the fidelity of next‐generation reanalysis products.
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