Abstract
The oceanic warm pool (OWP) defined by sea surface temperature (SST) is known as the “heat reservoir” in the ocean. The warmest portion in the ocean mirrors the fact that the wettest region with the largest accumulation of water vapor (WV) in the atmosphere, termed atmospheric wet pool (AWP), should be identified because of the well-known Clausius-Clapeyron relationship between SST and WV. In this study, we used 14-year simultaneous observations of WV and SST from January 1988 to December 2001 to define the AWP and investigate its coupling and co-variations with the OWP. The joint examination of the area variations, centroid locations, and zonal migrations of the AWP and OWP lead to a number of interesting findings. The results hopefully can contribute to our understanding of the air-sea interaction in general and characterization of El Niño/La Niña events in particular.
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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under projects (Nos. 40730530, 40675016, 40706056)
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Zhang, C., Chen, G. The atmospheric wet pool: definition and comparison with the oceanic warm pool. Chin. J. Ocean. Limnol. 26, 440–449 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-008-0440-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00343-008-0440-6