Satellite SAR observation of the sea surface wind field caused by rain cells

Rain cells or convective rain,the dominant form of rain in the tropics and subtropics,can be easy detected by satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar（SAR） images with high horizontal resolution.The footprints of rain cells on SAR images are caused by the scattering and attenuation of the rain drops,as well as the downward airflow.In this study,we extract sea surface wind field and its structure caused by rain cells by using a RADARSAT-2 SAR image with a spatial resolution of 100 m for case study.We extract the sea surface wind speeds from SAR image by using CMOD4 geophysical model function with outside wind directions of NCEP final operational global analysis data,Advance Scatterometer（ASCAT） onboard European Met Op-A satellite and microwave scatterometer onboard Chinese HY-2 satellite,respectively.The root-mean-square errors（RMSE） of these SAR wind speeds,validated against NCEP,ASCAT and HY-2,are 1.48 m/s,1.64 m/s and 2.14 m/s,respectively.Circular signature patterns with brighter on one side and darker on the opposite side on SAR image are interpreted as the sea surface wind speed（or sea surface roughness） variety caused by downdraft associated with rain cells.The wind speeds taken from the transect profile which superposes to the wind ambient vectors and goes through the center of the circular footprint of rain cell can be fitted as a cosine or sine curve in high linear correlation with the values of no less than 0.80.The background wind speed,the wind speed caused by rain cell and the diameter of footprint of the rain cell with kilometers or tens of kilometers can be acquired by fitting curve.Eight cases interpreted and analyzed in this study all show the same conclusion.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF INTERANNUAL AND INTERDECADAL VARIABILITY OF SURFACE WIND OVER THE TROPICAL PACIFIC

A global atmospheric general circulation model (L9R15 AGCMs) forced by COADS SST was integrated from 1945 to 1993. Interannual and interdecadal variability of the simulated surface wind over the tropical Pacific was analyzed and shown to agree vey well with observation. Simulation of surface wind over the central-western equatorial Pacific was more successful than that over the eastern Pacific. Zonal propagating feature of interannual variability of the tropical Pacific wind anomalies and its decadal difference were also simulated successfully. The close agreement between simulation and observation on the existence of obvious interdecadal variability of tropical Pacific surface wind attested to the high simulation capability of AGCM.

Evaluation of High-Resolution WRF Model Simulations of Surface Wind over the West Coast of India

This paper presents results from a statistical validation of the hindcasts of surface wind by a high-reso-ution-mesoscale atmospheric numerical model Advanced Research WRF （ARW3.3）, which is set up to force the operational coastal ocean forecast system at Indian Na- tional Centre for Ocean Information Services （INCOIS）. Evaluation is carried out based on comparisons of day-3 forecasts of surface wind with in situ and remote-sensing data. The results show that the model predicts the surface wind fields fairly accurately over the west coast of India, with high skill in predicting the surface wind during the pre-monsoon season. The model predicts the diurnal variability of the surface wind with reasonable accuracy. The model simulates the land-sea breeze cycle in the coastal region realistically, which is very clearly observed during the northeast monsoon and pre-monsoon season and is less prominent during the southwest monsoon season.

Numerical simulation analysis of wind field above pavement surface in different landforms by computational fluid dynamics approach

The temperature and moisture of the pavement structure can be greatly influenced by the wind speed above pavement surface.The wind speed above pavement surface not only is dominated by the wind speed of atmosphere,but also it is highly related to the landform and buildings around road.However,currently there are no studies about the wind field above pavement surface in consideration of the effect of the landform and buildings.A simulation method,which is combined with geographic information system(GIS),wind data from meteorological observatory and computational fluid dynamics(CFD)software,is employed to study the effect of the landform and the wind speed of atmosphere on the wind field above pavement surface.Three cases are studied,including an urban road,a coastal road and a mountainous road.Furthermore,the wind field distribution above road surface in different wind directions was studied in our work.Results indicate that the wind field above pavement surface can be greatly affected by the landforms,buildings and wind direction.This simulation method can provide reliable results for the wind field above pavement surface.The maximum relative errors between simulated and measured wind speed can be less than 20%in the analysis of the three cases.It is recommended that the CFD simulation method is a good tool to accurately know the wind field above pavement surface.

A survey on pollen dispersal in the western Pacific Ocean and its paleoclimatological significance as a proxy for variation of the Asian winter monsoon

Pollen grains deposited in marine sediments are transported from land to sea by wind or surface water flows.We analyzed pollen collected from the air and seawater from the coast of the Yellow Sea near China and into the western Pacific Ocean between December 2008 and January 2009 during the cruise "KX08-973".Results showed that abundant pollen grains of Artemisia and Chenopodiaceae were probably transported to the continental shelf of the East China Sea,the East Philippine Sea and the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean by the winter monsoon.Some pollen may have even traveled over 2000 km from the East Asia continent to the tropical Pacific Ocean.However,a gradual decline of temperate components and an increase in tropical components was observed towards the tropical regions.Fern spores were rare in the air samples,but much more abundant in seawater samples,even though they were collected in nearly the same areas,which indicates that most fern spores were carried to the ocean by flowing water.These results suggest that the winter monsoon may be the major pollen carrier and transporter in the study area during winter.