Analysis of the position and strength of westerlies and trades with implications for Agulhas leakage and South Benguela upwelling

Tim, Nele; Zorita, Eduardo; Emeis, Kay-Christian; Schwarzkopf, Franziska U.; Biastoch, Arne; Hünicke, Birgit

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-847-2019

Articles | Volume 10, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-847-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-847-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 10, issue 4

Research article

|

05 Dec 2019

Research article |

| 05 Dec 2019

Analysis of the position and strength of westerlies and trades with implications for Agulhas leakage and South Benguela upwelling

Nele Tim, Eduardo Zorita, Kay-Christian Emeis, Franziska U. Schwarzkopf, Arne Biastoch, and Birgit Hünicke

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-10-847-2019-supplement

Data sets

The NCEP/NCAR 40-year reanalysis project (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.derived.surfaceflux.html) E. Kalnay, M. Kanamitsu, R. Kistler, W. Collins, D. Deaven, L. Gandin, M. Iredell, S. Saha, G. White, J. Woollen, Y. Zhu, M. Chelliah, W. Ebisuzaki, W. Higgins, J. Janowiak, K. C. Mo, C. Ropelewski, J. Wang, A. Leetmaa, R. Reynolds, R. Jenne, and D. Joseph https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0477(1996)077<0437:tnyrp>2.0.co;2

The JRA-55 Reanalysis: General Specifications and Basic Characteristics (https://rda.ucar.edu) S. Kobayashi, Y. Ota, Y. Harada, A. Ebita, M. Moriya, H. Onoda, K. Onogi, H. Kamahori, C. Kobayashi, H. Endo, K. Miyaoka, and K. Takahashi https://doi.org/10.2151/jmsj.2015-001

The global climatology of an interannually varying air-sea flux data set (https://data1.gfdl.noaa.gov/nomads/forms/core/COREv2/CIAF_v2.html) W. Large and S. Yeager https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-008-0441-3

ERA-20C: An Atmospheric Reanalysis of the Twentieth Century (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era-20c) P. Poli, H. Hersbach, D. P. Dee, P. Berrisford, A. J. Simmons, F. Vitart, P. Laloyaux, D. G. H. Tan, C. Peubey, J.-N. Thépaut, Y. Trémolet, E. V. Hólm, M. Bonavita, L. Isaksen, and M. Fisher https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0556.1

Optimal Spectral Nudging for Global Dynamical Downscaling (https://cera-www.dkrz.de/WDCC/ui/cerasearch/) M. Schubert-Frisius, F. Feser, H. Von Storch, and S. Rast https://doi.org/10.1175/mwr-d-16-0036.1

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Short summary

Our study reveals that the latitudinal position and intensity of Southern Hemisphere trades and westerlies are correlated. In the last decades the westerlies have shifted poleward and intensified. Furthermore, the latitudinal shifts and intensity of the trades and westerlies impact the sea surface temperatures around southern Africa and in the South Benguela upwelling region. The future development of wind stress depends on the strength of greenhouse gas forcing.