Collaborative Research: The Effect of Near-Equatorial Islands on Climate

该项目将研究近赤道岛屿对气候的影响。一系列的实验，首先是一个简单的，二维模式没有旋转的影响，然后与马萨诸塞州理工学院的大气环流模式（MIT-GCM）将进行检查的影响，岛屿上的降雨分布，所产生的风场，从而对大尺度环流。实验与MIT-GCM将进行简化的几何形状，包括障碍的宽度可以忽略不计的海洋环流，但不是大气，流通和不同的数量，分布，横向尺寸和海拔的热带岛屿，以寻求这些措施之间的比例关系的岛屿范围和大气和海洋的响应。目标有两个方面：首先，岛屿的增长是否足以改变大气环流，使赤道太平洋的海面温度分布从类似于永久性的厄尔尼诺状态转变为目前的弱拉尼娜状态？第二，参数化可以推导出岛屿对热带降水和上升的影响，使GCM包括太小，无法解决在这样的全球模式的岛屿的影响？更广泛的影响是高的：如果岛屿确实在气候方面发挥重要作用，这项研究将产生参数，有助于将小岛屿的影响纳入模型模拟。此外，这项工作将支持一名研究生。.

This project will examine the effect of near-equatorial islands on climate. A series of experiments, first with a simple, two-dimensional model without the effects of rotation, and then with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology General Circulation Model (MIT-GCM) will be carried out to examine the effects of islands on the distribution of rainfall, the resulting wind field, and hence on large-scale circulation. Experiments with the MIT-GCM will be carried out with simplified geometries that include barriers of negligible width to ocean circulation, but not atmospheric, circulation and with different numbers, distributions, lateral dimensions, and elevations of tropical islands in order to seek scaling relationships between these measures of island extent and the response of the atmosphere and ocean. The goals are two-fold: First, could the growth of islands to build the Maritime Continent have altered atmospheric circulation sufficiently to change the sea-surface temperature distribution in the equatorial Pacific from one resembling a permanent El Niño-like state to its present mean weak La Niña-like state? Second, can parameterizations be derived for the effects of islands on tropical precipitation and ascent that allow GCMs to include the effects of islands that are too small to be resolved in such global models? The broader impacts are high: if islands do play a major role in climate, this study will yield parameterizations that will be useful for including the effects of small islands in model simulations. In addition this work will support a graduate student. .