Assessing wind profile effects on the global atmospheric torque

Miranda, P. M. A., Martins, J. P. A. and Teixeira, M. A. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1205-3233 (2009) Assessing wind profile effects on the global atmospheric torque. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 135 (640). pp. 807-814. ISSN 1477-870X doi: 10.1002/qj.393

Abstract/Summary

The impact of a new approach to the evaluation of surface gravity wave drag (GWD) is assessed. This approach uses linear theory, but incorporates the effects of wind profile shear and curvature, by means of a second-order WKB approximation. While the theory predicts the possibility of either drag enhancement or reduction, depending on the wind profile, results obtained with the ERA-40 reanalysis data clearly indicate the predominance of local drag enhancement. However, the global impact of shear on the atmospheric axial GWD torque comes mostly from regions with predominantly easterly flow, contributing to a slight reduction of the bias found in different studies of the global angular momentum budget. The relative correction due to shear on linear GWD is found not to depend too strongly on the levels chosen for the computation of the low-level wind derivatives.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/29243
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology No Reading authors. Back catalogue items
Publisher	Royal Meteorological Society
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