Climate Atlas of the Atlantic Ocean

Beschreibung

The growing interest in climate and climatic change has renewed the demand for climate descriptions of the world oceans. Fields of climate variables are used as boundary conditions, or sea truth, for atmospheric and oceanic models and coupled models of the atmosphere-ocean system. The rapid improvements that modeling has made in recent years also call for more detailed descriptions of processes at the air-sea interface. The climate atlas presented here is restricted to the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic is of special interest for two reasons: The cross-equatorial ocean heat transport is an outstanding climatic feature which contributes to the high sea-surface temperatures in the Northeastern North Atlantic and the mild climate of Europe. From a more technical point of view, the data coverage of the Atlantic is much denser than for other parts of the world oceans. Hence, the Atlantic can well serve as a reliable test area of sea truth for both modeling and satellite remote sensing. The enclosed CD-ROM contains the complete material in color.
The presented climate atlas follows with regard to structure and vol ume the Bunker Climate Atlas of the North Atlantic Ocean published 1985 by H.-J. Isemer and L. Hasse, which has become a standard work for the climate study community. A new edition was appropriate, since during the last decade much progress was achieved in the correct interpretation of the wind speed reported by merchant ships. As the wind speed is an essential parameter for the fundamental air-sea interactions, namely the exchange of momentum and energy between ocean and atmosphere, considerable impact on resulting climate key parameters as Sverdrup transport or meridional heat transport could be expected. Furthermore, individual ship observations are nowadays available from COADS, the Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Data Set, and, due to the grown computer power, these data are processable in reasonable time. Thus, improving the calculations of air-sea fluxes, as performed by Isemer and Hasse, is no longer a complex and tricky venture, since flux parameterizations can be applied directly to the ship observations. Compared to the Bunker Altas we expanded the considered sea area and included also the South Atlantic. Considering the entire Atlantic Ocean reveals not only interesting features of the southern hemisphere but allows also a finer assessment of the resulting energy fluxes.
Clear representation of extensive data
Internationally renown institute
Complete material in color on the enclosed CD-ROM

Autor*in

Ralf Lindau

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Atlantic Ocean Cloud Klimaänderung Northeaster Ocean Precipitation Wind speed atmosphere climate climate change cloud amount satellite sea level temperature wind

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