| Session Details | |
| Section | OS - Ocean Sciences |
| Session Title | Air-sea Interactions in Western Boundary Current Systems and Marginal Seas |
| Main Convener | Prof. Hisashi Nakamura (The University of Tokyo, Japan) |
| Co-convener(s) | Prof. Bo Qiu (University of Hawaii, United States) Prof. Shoshiro Minobe (Hokkaido University, Japan) Dr. Meghan Cronin (Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, United States) Dr. Justin Small (National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, United States) Prof. Shang-Ping Xie (University of California, San Diego, United States) |
| Session Description | This session focuses on extratropical air-sea interactions in western boundary current systems and marginal seas, where huge amounts of heat and moisture are supplied from the ocean to the atmosphere. Particular emphasis is placed on atmospheric and oceanic processes, occurring over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, that are involved in the air-sea interactions within those “hot spots” and that may play a role in the climate system and its variability. Contributions for oral and poster presentations based on observational, diagnostic, modeling (either realistic or idealized) and theoretical studies are invited on a wide range of topics including, but not limited to, the processes affecting warm and cool ocean currents in the western boundary current systems and associated oceanic fronts, and their impacts on near-surface wind distribution, cloud formation, organization of precipitation systems, cyclone development, the formation of storm tracks and jet streams, and their variability and modulations on interannual and decadal scales, including their possible influence on the troposphere-stratosphere coupled variability, in addition to the possible feedbacks of those atmospheric processes upon ocean currents/jets, meso-scale eddies, mode water formation and marine ecosystems. Contributions on particular processes and phenomena that characterize air-sea interactions over the marginal seas are also invited, including strong seasonality via bathymetric effects and continental effects through atmospheric processes and river discharge, and interactions with the open oceans. |