Improvement of the surface process in OGCM with a new mixed layer model
Yign Noh & Chan Joo Jang
Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, Yonsei Univ., Seoul, Korea
With an aim to develop an OGCM suitable for the climate model, by representing more realistic air-sea interaction such as sea surface temperature (SST) and heat flux, various experiments were carried out of OGCM with different surface heat flux forcing methods and mixed layer processes. A new mixed layer model based on Noh & Kim (1999), which was embedded into the high resolution OGCM (GFDL model with 10 x 10 horizontal resolution) together with the optimized heat flux by combining the climatological heat flux and the restoring force, showed the significant improvements in the predictions of the SST and other upper ocean structures, compared with the previous simulation results. It was particularly observed that the circulation and thermohaline structure of the equatorial Pacific Ocean is seriously affected by the mixed layer process. We also investigated the effects of the mixed layer process and the surface heat flux forcing methods on other aspects of OGCM such as the surface and deep circulation, poleward heat transfer, and variability. The new OGCM is expected to be coupled to AGCM more naturally, because the requirement of the artificial restoring term toward the climatological SST has been minimized.
