Science Working Group: C. R. Mechoso (Chair)

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• Science Working Group C. R. Mechoso (Chair)
• Atmosphere C. Bretherton, R. Garreaud
• Ocean B. Weller, J. McWilliams
• Field Experiment (US) C. Fairall, R. Wood
• Field Experiment (Chile) J. Rutllant, O.
  Pizarro
• VAMOS Project Office J. Meitin on Program
  Requirements

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NOAA Strategy and Goals

• Vision
• A vastly enhanced scientific understanding of the
  role of the oceans, coasts, and atmosphere in the
  global ecosystem available to society and
  national leadership as a basis for critical
  social and economic policy decisions
• Mission
• To understand and predict changes in the Earths
  environment and manage coastal and marine
  resources to meet the Nations economic, social
  and environmental needs.
• Goals
• Protect, restore, and manage the use of coastal
  and ocean resources through an ecosystem approach
  to management
• Understand climate variability and change to
  enhance societys ability to plan and respond
• Serve societys needs for weather and water
  information
• Support the nations commerce with information
  for safe, efficient, and environmentally sound
  transportation
• Provide critical support for NOAAs mission

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NOAA Climate Program Strategy
Understand climate variability and change to
enhance societys ability to plan and respond
Increase availability of climate products and
services to enhance public and private sector
decision making
Regional Decision Support
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VOCALS Goals and Objectives

• The overall goal of VOCALS is to develop and
  promote scientific activities leading to improved
  understanding, model simulations, and predictions
  of the southeastern Pacific (SEP) coupled
  ocean-atmosphere-land system, on diurnal to
  interannual timescales.
• The science objectives of VOCALS include
• Improving the understanding and simulation of
  aerosol-cloud-drizzle interactions in the marine
  PBL.
• Improving the understanding and simulating
  the ocean budgets of heat, salinity, and
  nutrients in the SEP.
• Characterizing, determining, and alleviating
  the systematic biases of atmosphere-ocean GCMs in
  the SEP.
• Elucidating and understanding interactions
  between the SEP climate and remote climates.

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VOCALS Components
Airborne NCAR C-130 (and others) Stratocumulus,
aerosol
SHIP Ron Brown
(and others) Ocean eddies, DMS fluxes
VOCALS-REX
Modeling CGCM Biases Numerical Predictions
Regional Experiment in the Southeastern Pacific
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• VOCALS-REX
• Aircraft
• NCAR C130
• Ships
• NOAA Ron Brown
• Chilean
• October 2007

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NOAA Climate Program Strategy and VOCALS
Contribution
Understand climate variability and change to
enhance societys ability to plan and respond
The SEP is woefully unexplored yet it is home to
the largest stratus sheet and the longest stretch
of upwelling coastline on the planet. The
chemistry in the remote SEP is as pristine as it
comes and will shed light on the climatological
"background" against which all current-day
climate forcings are measured. It is the only
upwelling region that connects with the tropical
oceans and has important ENSO connections.
VOCALS addresses not one of these aspects, but
several (ocean, atmosphere, chemistry)
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NOAA Climate Program Strategy and VOCALS
Contribution
Understand climate variability and change to
enhance societys ability to plan and respond
How clouds, and especially low clouds, will
change in a future climate is highly uncertain.
Both physical feedbacks and aerosol effects on
clouds are key unresolved problems. Ocean
mesoscale variability is poorly understood and
parameterized in most coupled GCMs. VOCALS
addresses these issues that are key for climate
predictions in one of the major upwelling regions.
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NOAA Climate Program Strategy and VOCALS
Contribution
Understand climate variability and change to
enhance societys ability to plan and respond
VOCALS focuses on the South Eastern Pacific,
where there is evidence that climate forcing is
affected by interactions between clouds with
aerosol through links between the latter and the
macrophysical structure of the former. The
VOCALS region is a unique test bed for studying
these key aspects of climate forcing because 1)
it is home to some of the most stationary cloud
systems that are as close to idealized as they
come, and 2) sulfur sources are important but
few, and there is a strong possibility of an
accurate characterization of their production
(aerosols, gas phase).
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NOAA Climate Program Strategy and VOCALS
Contribution
Understand climate variability and change to
enhance societys ability to plan and respond
The surface fluxes of precursor gases (DMS and
VOCs) grow the aerosols that control cloud
properties. (DMS dimethylsulfide). The supply
of DMS and its oxidation mechanisms limit new
particle nucleation and growth. To what extent do
these processes affect the re-filling of POCs
with clouds, and what is the role of iodine,
ammonia, and organics? VOCALS/SOLAS addresses the
study of this chemistry from both ships and
aircraft.
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NOAA Climate Program Strategy
Understand climate variability and change to
enhance societys ability to plan and respond
Increase availability of climate products and
services to enhance public and private sector
decision making
Regional Decision Support
VOCALS will develop a Framework for numerical
climate prediction in interannual time scales by
coupling global models models of the coupled
atmosphere-ocean system to regional model of the
eastern Tropical Pacific.
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EPIC Contributed Directly to NOAAs Goals in

• The development of parameterizations, which can
  eventually be used by NOAA climate/NWP models.
• The evaluation of NCEP products, leading to their
  wider usage and improvement, which will
  eventually feed into CFES.
• The evaluation/improvements of the Ocean
  Observing System.
• The direct NOAA transition to operations, by
  working jointly with NCEP/EMC, NCEP/CPC,
  NESDIS/NCDC on models and data.

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• however, EPIC
• focused on the equatorial region, while VOCALS
  expands to the midlatitudes
• aimed just to establish crude local climatology
  for basic tests of model performance in the
  eastern Tropical Pacific, while VOCALS aims to a
  much more detail and spatial coverage as well to
  more processes, etc.
• For example
• EPIC inferred cloud microphysics from radar data,
  while VOCALS attempts direct estimates by
  aircraft.
• EPIC addressed eddy transports in the ocean only
  indirectly, while VOCALS identifies them as one
  of the major targets.
• EPIC examined aerosol - cloud interactions from
  ship data, while VOCALS does it much more
  properly by using both aircraft and ship data.
• EPIC did not include biological effects, while
  VOCALS has incorporated SOLAS, which specializes
  in such effects.
• EPIC did not target directly numerical
  prediction, while VOCALS aims to develop a new
  framework for prediction in interannual time
  scales.

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CGCM Problems NCEP CFS Model(also GFDL, NCAR)
CFS Errors

• The CFS model has significant errors in the SEP
• There is a meridional shift in ITCZ (top), a warm
  SST bias (middle) and insufficient stratocumulus
  cloud cover, (bottom)
• These errors adversely affect the skill of CFS
  climate forecasts (ENSO).
• VOCALS addresses the model developments required
  to alleviate these systematic CGCM errors

Prec
SST
CLD
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VOCALS aims to develop a Modeling Framework for
Interannual Climate Predictions
CAM NCEP GFDL UCLA
AGCM Atmosphere General Circulation
Model OGCM Ocean General Circulation Model
AGCM
RAM
POP MIT
OGCM
ROMS
ESMF Infrastructure