Air-Ocean Surface Heat Exchange (AOSHE) Model and Low Frequency Unstable Modes in Atmosphere and Ocean

摘要

Several important mechanisms of air-ocean interaction for the El Nino and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon have been developed in the past decade ocean wave propagation, delay-oscillator, two equilibrium states, and air-ocean coupled instabilities. Due to crude parameterization of thermodynamical processes in both atmosphere and ocean, these theories either cannot explain the transition between El Nino and La Nina (e.g., coupled instability theories), or need an artificially setting-up criterion to make such a transition (e.g., slowly propagating oceanic Rossby wave theory). The irregularity of ENSO implies that the ENSO events cannot be explained as a pure wave propagation. More detailed research on thermodynamics in both ocean and atmosphere is needed before we run the oceanic and atmospheric GCMs.