The responses to positive and negative sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the North Pacific are computed with a time-dependent, quasi-geostrophic, global spectral model with a T21 horizontal resolution and three levels in the vertical. The simplicity of the model allows a large number of cases starting from different initial conditions to be run. The model produces on average a ridge (low) downstream of the warm (cold) SST anomaly, but the average response to the warm anomaly is much weaker and statistically less significant than that to the cold anomaly. In the case of the warm SST anomaly, the storm track is displaced northward into the high-pressure atmospheric anomaly, whereas in the case of the cold SST anomaly, the storm track is moved southward, away from the atmospheric low-pressure anomaly. The higher level of atmospheric nonlinearity in the warm cases leads to more case-to-case variability in the model response to the SST anomaly than for the cold SST anomaly. The results are compared with those of previous work in the literature where the response of a GCM to a warm SST anomaly was found to be weaker and statistically less significant than that to a cold anomaly.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.27920 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Xing, Zeda, 1973- |
| Contributors | Derome, Jacques (advisor), Lin, Charles (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001617559, proquestno: MQ37178, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
Page generated in 0.002 seconds