Russian State Hydrometeorological University
Russian Federation
Marine Hydrophysical Institute of RAS
Russian Federation
Purpose. Tropical cyclones leave ‘footprints’ on the ocean surface in the form of sea surface height anomalies, which are well observed by satellite altimeters. Recent studies have shown that the values of these anomalies, normalized by the square of the maximum wind speed in the tropical cyclone and the acceleration due to gravity, are a universal function of a dimensionless parameter composed of the radius of maximum wind speed, translation speed of the tropical cyclone and the buoyancy frequency in the seasonal pycnocline. The purpose of this paper is to investigate physical processes responsible for the formation of tropical cyclone wakes in sea surface height anomalies, assess contribution of barotropic and baroclinic modes, and substantiate and quantify the self-similarity of hurricane-induced sea surface height anomalies revealed in satellite altimetry. Methods and Results. The paper considers sea surface height anomalies in wakes of tropical cyclones observed in different regions of the World Ocean from 2010 to 2020. The modelling is carried out using a simplified model of the baroclinic and barotropic response of the ocean to moving tropical cyclones. Calculations show that the first and second baroclinic modes make a significant contribution to the sea surface height anomaly, and the contribution of the third baroclinic mode is of secondary importance. The relative contribution of the barotropic mode depends substantially on the local ocean depth, and it is greater when the ocean is shallower. However, the contribution of the barotropic mode to satellite altimetry measurements of the ocean surface height in wakes of tropical cyclones can be ignored, since the lifetime of the barotropic perturbation is significantly shorter than a typical time interval between the passage of the tropical cyclone and the measurements. Conclusions. Empirical parameterizations of satellite altimetry measurements of the sea surface height anomaly in wakes of tropical cyclones can be reproduced by superposition of the first three baroclinic modes describing the ocean response to the tropical cyclone passage. In this case, the best fit of the modelling results to the measurement data is achieved if the ocean surface drag coefficient at hurricane-force winds has an approximately constant value of 2.25⋅10–3. This result can be considered as an estimate of the momentum exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere at hurricane-force winds, which remains a subject of present-day scientific effort.
tropical cyclone, sea surface height, satellite altimeter, sea surface height anomaly, baroclinic mode, barotropic mode, sea surface height parameterization
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