Wind Field Representations and Their Effect on Shelf Circulation Models: A CaseStudy in the Chukchi Sea

摘要

Arctic pollutant transport models use winds obtained from forecasts of surfaceatmospheric pressure fields. We have investigated the difference among three nominally identical wind field representations derived from surface atmospheric pressure fields prepared by the European Center for Medium Weather Range Forecasting (ECMWF), the U.S. Navy's Fleet Numerical Oceanography Center (FNOC), and the National Center for Environmental Predictions and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR). We have analyzed: wind and surface atmospheric pressure data from the National Weather Service offices at Barrow, Alaska, and Kotzebue, Alaska, to examine differences between and estimated winds; ice-drifting buoy data from the International Arctic Buoy Program (IABP), to examine differences between observed and interpolated surface atmospheric pressures, and to examine differences between observed and simulated ice drift; and differences in shelf circulation, as predicted by 2-D and 3-D barotropic shelf circulation models when forced by the three wind field representations.