Title page for ETD etd-04112005-165740

Type of Document

Thesis

Author

Weitlich, Derrick Karl

Author's Email Address

dweitlic@met.fsu.edu

URN

etd-04112005-165740

Title

Seasonal and Interannual Variability of Tropical Diurnal Warming of Sea Surface Temperatures

Degree

Master of Science

Department

Meteorology, Department of

Advisory Committee

Advisor Name	Title
Carol Anne Clayson	Committee Chair
Mark Bourassa	Committee Member
T.N. Krishnamurti	Committee Member

Keywords

Diurnal Warming
Sea Surface Temperature
Satellite Observation

Date of Defense

2005-03-30

Availability

unrestricted

Abstract

A method for determining the diurnal sea surface temperature (SST) cycle through satellite data has previously been developed by Clayson and Curry (1996). In their work they applied a parameterized equation from Webster et al. (1996) that uses the magnitude of peak solar insolation, the cumulative amount of daily precipitation, and average daily wind speed to compute the diurnal warming of SSTs. This parameterization has been applied to data obtained by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) and Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) data to produce a daily diurnal warming database for the global tropics during the years 1996-2000. Precipitation values were not yet available and were found to play a smaller role in diurnal warming, so they were not used in this study. Daily files of diurnal warming (dSST) were created at a spatial resolution of 0.25 deg. longitude x 0.25 deg. latitude. This study examines the spatial and temporal variability of dSST over the global tropics by examining averages of these values seasonally and year to year and by conducting an EOF analysis of the data for the tropical Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Results show that different atmospheric processes influence dSST for each tropical ocean basin. Also, dSST is shown to be driven by surface fluxes and not the underlying ocean characteristics. However, diurnal warming can affect the depth of mixing and entrainment cooling in the upper ocean by influencing the oceanic stability at the surface.

Files

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Filename		Size	28.8 Modem	56K Modem	ISDN (64 Kb)	ISDN (128 Kb)	Higher-speed Access
	Preliminaries.pdf	81.79 Kb	00:00:22	00:00:11	00:00:10	00:00:05	< 00:00:01
	Thesis.pdf	9.51 Mb	00:44:02	00:22:38	00:19:49	00:09:54	00:00:50