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Observations of the cold wake of Typhoon Fanapi (2010)
Author(s) -
Mrvaljevic Rosalinda K.,
Black Peter G.,
Centurioni Luca R.,
Chang YaTing,
D'Asaro Eric A.,
Jayne Steven R.,
Lee Craig M.,
Lien RenChieh,
Lin II,
Morzel Jan,
Niiler deceased Pearn P.,
Rainville Luc,
Sanford Thomas B.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2012gl054282
Subject(s) - typhoon , wake , geology , storm , mesoscale meteorology , mixed layer , sea surface temperature , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , climatology , environmental science , oceanography , physics , mechanics
Several tens of thousands of temperature profiles are used to investigate the thermal evolution of the cold wake of Typhoon Fanapi, 2010. Typhoon Fanapi formed a cold wake in the Western North Pacific Ocean on 18 September characterized by a mixed layer that was >2.5 °C cooler than the surrounding water, and extending to >80 m, twice as deep as the preexisting mixed layer. The initial cold wake became capped after 4 days as a warm, thin surface layer formed. The thickness of the capped wake, defined as the 26 °C–27 °C layer, decreased, approaching the background thickness of this layer with an e‐folding time of 23 days, almost twice the e‐folding lifetime of the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) cold wake (12 days). The wake was advected several hundreds of kilometers from the storm track by a preexisting mesoscale eddy. The observations reveal new intricacies of cold wake evolution and demonstrate the challenges of describing the thermal structure of the upper ocean using sea surface information alone.