• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• 제34권4호
• /
• pp.431-444
• /
• 2012

We simulated and compared present and future ocean circulation in the East China Sea using an East Asia Regional Ocean model. Mean climate states for 1990~1999 and 2030~2039 were used as surface conditions for simulations of present and future ocean circulation, which were derived from the simulations of three different global climate models, ECHAM5-MPI, GFDL-CM2.0 and MIROC3.2_hires, for the 20th century and those of 21st century as projected by the IPCC SRES A1B. East Asia Regional Ocean model simulated the detailed patterns of temperature, salinity and current fields under present and future climate conditions and their changes instead of the simple structures of global climate models. To some extent, there are consistent ocean circulation changes derived from the three pairs corresponding to the global climate model in so much as the temperature increases not only in winter but summer at both the surface and bottom and that temperature and salinity changes are prominent near the Chinese coast and in the Changjiang bank. However, the simulated circulations are different among each other depending on the prescribed atmospheric conditions not only under present climate but also with regard to future climate conditions. There is not a coincident tendency in ocean circulation changes between present and future simulations derived from the three pairs. This suggests that more simulations with different pairs are needed.

• 대기
• /
• 제29권2호
• /
• pp.115-129
• /
• 2019

Surface winds over the ocean influence not only the climate change through air-sea interactions but the coastal erosion through the changes in wave height and direction. Thus, demands on a reliable projection of future changes in surface winds have been increasing in various fields. For the future projections, climate models have been widely used and, as a priori, their simulations of surface wind are required to be evaluated. In this study, we evaluate the climatological mean surface winds over the Korean Waters simulated by five regional climate models participating in Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) for East Asia (EA), an international regional climate model inter-comparison project. Compared with the ERA-interim reanalysis data, the CORDEX-EA models, except for HadGEM3-RA, produce stronger wind both in summer and winter. The HadGEM3-RA underestimates the wind speed and inadequately simulate the spatial distribution especially in summer. This summer wind error appears to be coincident with mean sea-level pressure in the North Pacific. For wind direction, all of the CORDEX-EA models simulate the well-known seasonal reversal of surface wind similar to the ERA-interim. Our results suggest that especially in summer, large-scale atmospheric circulation, downscaled by regional models with spectral nudging, significantly affect the regional surface wind on its pattern and strength.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• 제42권3호
• /
• pp.211-223
• /
• 2020

With the increasing demand for improved marine environments and safety, greater ability to minimize damages to coastal areas from harmful organisms, ship accidents, oil spills, etc. is required. In this regard, an accurate assessment and understanding of current systems is a crucial step to improve forecasting ability. In this study, we examine spatial and temporal characteristics of current systems in the adjacent seas of Jeju Island using a high-resolution regional ocean circulation model. Our model successfully captures the features of tides and tidal currents observed around Jeju Island. The tide form number calculated from the model result ranges between 0.3 and 0.45 in the adjacent seas of Jeju Island, indicating that the dominant type of tides is a combination of diurnal and semidiurnal, but predominantly semidiurnal. The spatial pattern of tidal current ellipses show that the tidal currents oscillate in a northwest-southeast direction and the rotating direction is clockwise in the adjacent seas of Jeju Island and counterclockwise in the Jeju Strait. Compared to the mean kinetic energy, the contribution of tidal current energy prevails the most parts of the region, but largely decreases in the eastern seas of Jeju Island where the Tsushima Warm Current is dominant. In addition, a Lagrangian particle-tracking experiment conducted suggests that particle trajectories in tidal currents flowing along the coast may differ substantially from the mean current direction. Thus, improving our understanding of tidal currents is essential to forecast the transport of marine pollution and harmful organisms in the adjacent seas of Jeju Island.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• 제43권2호
• /
• pp.53-63
• /
• 2021

Changes in a marine environment have a broad socioeconomic implication on fisheries and their relevant industries so that there has been a growing demand for the medium-range (months to years) prediction of the marine environment Using a medium-range ocean prediction model (Ocean Mid-range prediction System, OMIDAS) for the northwest Pacific, this study attempted to assess seasonal difference in the mid-range predictability of the sea surface temperature (SST), focusing on the Korea seas characterized as a complex marine system. A three-month re-forecast experiment was conducted for each of the four seasons in 2016 starting from January, forced with Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) forecast data. The assessment using relative root-mean-square-error was taken for the last month SST of each experiment. Compared to the CFSv2, the OMIDAS revealed a better prediction skill for the Korea seas SST, particularly in the Yellow sea mainly due to a more realistic representation of the topography and current systems. Seasonally, the OMIDAS showed better predictability in the warm seasons (spring and summer) than in the cold seasons (fall and winter), suggesting seasonal dependency in predictability of the Korea seas. In addition, the mid-range predictability for the Korea seas significantly varies depending on regions: the predictability was higher in the East Sea than in the Yellow Sea. The improvement in the seasonal predictability for the Korea seas by OMIDAS highlights the importance of a regional ocean modeling system for a medium-range marine prediction.

• 한국수자원학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 한국수자원학회 2015년도 학술발표회
• /
• pp.253-253
• /
• 2015

This research evaluated the effect of two main sources on the results of the ocean regional circulation model (ORCMs) during downscaling and nesting the results from the coarse data. The two sources should be the domain size, and temporal and spatial resolution different between driving and driven data. The Big-Brother Experiment is applied to examine the impact of them on the results of the ORCMs separately. Within resolution of 3km grid point ORCMs applying in the Big-Brother Experiment framework, it showed that the simulation results of the ORCMs depend on the domain size and specially the spatial and temporal resolution of lateral boundary conditions (LBCs). The domain size can be selected at 9.5 times larger than the interest area, and the spatial resolution between driving data and driven model can be up to 3 of ratio resolution and updating frequency of the LBCs can be up to every 6 hours per day.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• 제42권3호
• /
• pp.179-194
• /
• 2020

The present study aims to evaluate the effects of satellite-based SST (OSTIA) assimilation on a regional ocean circulation model for the Yellow and East China Seas (YECS), using three different assimilation methods: the Ensemble Optimal Interpolation (EnOI), Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF), and 4-Dimensional Variational (4DVAR) techniques, which are widely used in the ocean modeling communities. The model experiments show that an improved initial condition by assimilating the SST affects the seasonal water temperature and water mass distributions of the YECS. In particular, the SST data assimilation influences the temperature structures horizontally and vertically in winter, thereby improving the behavior of the YS warm current water. This is due to the fact that during wintertime the water column is well mixed, which is directly updated by the SST assimilation. The model comparisons indicate that the SST assimilation can improve the model performance in resolving the subsurface structures in wintertime, but has a relatively small impact in summertime due to the strong stratification. The differences among the different assimilation experiments are obvious when the SST was sharply changed due to a typhoon passage. Overall, the EnKF and 4DVAR show better agreement with the observations than the EnOI. The relatively low performance of EnOI under storm conditions may be related with a limitation of EnOI method whereby an analysis is obtained from a number of climatological fields, and thus the typhoon-induced SST changes in short-time scales may not be adequately reflected in the data assimilation.

• 한국해양공학회지
• /
• 제14권3호
• /
• pp.46-54
• /
• 2000

Three dimensional numerical experiments that included the land-use transformation by the large scale reclamation were used to investigate the mesoscale air flow over the coastal regions. In this paper the surface temperature of the inland was determined through the surface heat budget consideration with inclusion of a layer of vegetation. The vertical diffusion coefficients of momentum, heat and specific humidity in the constant flux layer were taken from the Mellor and Yamada(1975). It has shown that the resulting model is able to reproduce the air circulation in coastal regions, and the simulated characteristics agree with the known properties of this circulation. A series of numerical experiments were then carried out to investigate the diurnal response of the air flow to various types of surface inhomogeneities.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
• /
• 제54권4호
• /
• pp.545-561
• /
• 2018

Over the North East Asia, extreme anomalous precipitation were observed in 2013 and 2014. During 2013 summer the precipitation was found to be higher (two standard deviation) than the climatological mean of the region; whereas during 2014, which was a borderline El Ni?o year, precipitation was found to be lower (one standard deviation). To understand the differences of these two anomalous years the Global/Regional Integrated Model system (GRIMs) has been used. The study found that low landsurface temperature and high sea-surface temperature over ocean caused a smaller land-sea contrast of surface temperature between East Asia and North West Pacific Ocean in 2014, which could have caused an eastward shift of mean monsoon circulation in that year compared to the circulation in 2013. Due to a change in the lower level circulation and wind field over East Asia the evaporation and moisture transport patterns became very different in those two years. In 2013, this study found high latent heat flux over Eastern China, which implies an increased surface evaporation over that region, and the moisture transported to the north by the mean monsoon circulation; whereas, there was no correlated transport of moisture to the North East Asia during 2014. The precipitable water over North East Asia has a stronger correlation with the latent heat flux over southern land region than that from Ocean region in the eastern side in both the years. A new approach is proposed to estimate the sub-grid scale hydrometeors from GRIMs, overestimated in the existing model.

• Journal of the korean society of oceanography
• /
• 제39권1호
• /
• pp.72-95
• /
• 2004

The Yellow Sea is characterized by relatively shallow water depth, varying range of tidal action and very complex coastal geometry such as islands, bays, peninsulas, tidal flats, shoals etc. The dynamic system is controlled by tides, regional winds, river discharge, and interaction with the Kuroshio. The circulation, water mass properties and their variability in the Yellow Sea are very complicated and still far from clear understanding. In this study, an effort to improve our understanding the dynamic feature of the Yellow Sea system was conducted using numerical simulation with the ROMS model, applying climatologic forcing such as winds, heat flux and fresh water precipitation. The inter-annual variability of general circulation and thermohaline structure throughout the year has been obtained, which has been compared with observational data sets. The simulated horizontal distribution and vertical cross-sectional structures of temperature and salinity show a good agreement with the observational data indicating significantly the water masses such as Yellow Sea Warm Water, Yellow Sea Bottom Cold Water, Changjiang River Diluted Water and other sporadically observed coastal waters around the Yellow Sea. The tidal effects on circulation and dynamic features such as coastal tidal fronts and coastal mixing are predominant in the Yellow Sea. Hence the tidal effects on those dynamic features are dealt in the accompanying paper (Kim et at., 2004). The ROMS model adopts curvilinear grid with horizontal resolution of 35 km and 20 vertical grid spacing confirming to relatively realistic bottom topography. The model was initialized with the LEVITUS climatologic data and forced by the monthly mean air-sea fluxes of momentum, heat and fresh water derived from COADS. On the open boundaries, climatological temperature and salinity are nudged every 20 days for data assimilation to stabilize the modeling implementation. This study demonstrates a Yellow Sea version of Atlantic Basin experiment conducted by Haidvogel et al. (2000) experiment that the ROMS simulates the dynamic variability of temperature, salinity, and velocity fields in the ocean. However the present study has been improved to deal with the large river system, open boundary nudging process and further with combination of the tidal forcing that is a significant feature in the Yellow Sea.

• Ocean and Polar Research
• /
• 제44권4호
• /
• pp.269-285
• /
• 2022

The interaction between ocean and ice shelf is a critical physical process in relation to water mass transformations and ice shelf melting/freezing at the ocean-ice interface. However, it remains challenging to thoroughly understand the process due to a lack of observational data with respect to ice shelf cavities. This is the first study to simulate the variability and circulation of water mass both overlying the continental shelf and underneath an ice shelf and an ice tongue in the Terra Nova Bay (TNB), East Antarctica. To explore the properties of water mass and circulation patterns in the TNB and the corresponding effects on sub ice shelf basal melting, we explicitly incorporate the dynamic-thermodynamic processes acting on the ice shelf in the Regional Ocean Modeling System. The simulated water mass formation and circulation in the TNB region agree well with previous studies. The model results show that the TNB circulation is dominated by the geostrophic currents driven by lateral density gradients induced by the releasing of brine or freshwater at the polynya of the TNB. Meanwhile, the circulation dynamics in the cavity under the Nansen Ice shelf (NIS) are different from those in the TNB. The gravity-driven bottom current induced by High Salinity Shelf Water (HSSW) formed at the TNB polynya flows towards the grounding line, and the buoyance-driven flow associated with glacial meltwater generated by the HSSW emerges from the cavity along the ice base. Both current systems compose the thermohaline overturning circulation in the NIS cavity. This study estimates the NIS basal melting rate to be 0.98 m/a, which is comparable to the previously observed melt rate. However, the melting rate shows a significant variation in space and time.