Mean state of global and regional ocean water cycle based on ERA-interim reanalysis
- PDF / 5,736,186 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 6 Downloads / 158 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Mean state of global and regional ocean water cycle based on ERA-interim reanalysis Yinan Cai 1,2 & Yan Du 1,2,3 & Zesheng Chen 1,3 Received: 26 August 2019 / Accepted: 7 August 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Based on ERA-interim reanalysis dataset from 1979 to 2018, this study revisits the global and regional water cycle, as well as the water vapor transport between ocean basins. The surface of the Earth is divided into five continents and four ocean basins, water vapor budget, and its seasonal variability of each continent and ocean basin are calculated. The Indian Ocean and the Atlantic are major net water vapor source regions, ~ − 0.47 Sv and ~ −0.82 Sv, respectively, while the Pacific and the Arctic are weak net water vapor sink regions, ~ 0.04 Sv and ~ 0.06 Sv, respectively. A total of 85% of evaporation and 78% of precipitation occur at the ocean-atmosphere interface while 15% of evaporation and 22% of precipitation occur at the land-atmosphere interface. About 1.19 Sv water vapor is carried out from oceans to lands. The water vapor transport is about 0.07 Sv from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, and 0.22 Sv from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the segments. At low latitudes, both the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean transport water vapor to the Pacific, with a total of 0.29 Sv. Those results update the estimate of global and regional water vapor budget.
1 Introduction Water cycle is an important part of the climate system, maintaining by evaporation (E), precipitation (P), and water vapor transport. Driven by solar heating, water is evaporated from oceans, transported by winds, and condensed to form clouds and precipitation that falls to lands and oceans. When referring to global water cycle, people usually pay more attention to the terrestrial water cycle which is closely related to human life and economy. The largest component of the global water cycle operates over the ocean where nearly all of Earth’s free water resides. The global ocean covers 71% of the Earth surface and contains 97% of all free water stored (Trenberth et al. 2007). Water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas (Kiehl and Trenberth 1997) and is responsible for the * Yan Du [email protected] 1
State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography (South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), 164 West Xingang Road, Guangzhou 510301, China
2
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
3
Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, Guangzhou, China
dominant feedback in the climate system (Karl and Trenberth 2003). According to the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, alterations to the global water cycle are of concern as Earth’s climate changes. Due to its great heat capacity, the ocean has been taking up 93% of Earth’s energy increase since 1971 (Rhein et al. 2013), so when talking about “global warming,” it actually means “ocean warming”. A robust global inventory of current hydrologic flux rates is essential to the assessm
Data Loading...
