Periodicity and patterns of ocean wind and wave climate

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans
• Main Authors: Stopa, Justin E., Cheung, Kwok Fai
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: 13 HYDRO ENERGY; Indian; Pacific; Antarc*; Antarctica; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1755928; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1755928; https://doi.org/10.1002/2013jc009729

Winds and waves play a significant role in the global climate that can be examined through the proven Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR). A standard empirical orthogonal function method extracts dominant spatial patterns from time series of the reanalysis data. The results show strong zonal structures in the winds and saturation of swells across the ocean basins, but these dominant features obscure the periodicity of the climate cycles. Implementation of the Fourier transform removes non-oscillatory signals in the wind and waves for elucidation of cyclic features through the empirical orthogonal function method. A systematic analysis illustrates the dominant modes and their periodicity in the three major ocean basins. The North Atlantic dominates the variability in the entire ocean basin with a broad range of intra-seasonal signals. The Indian and Pacific are strongly influenced by inter-annual cycles of the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the Antarctica Oscillation. Here, these two oceans have strong components in the period of 50-90 days that have similar spatial structure to those of 2-5 years period suggesting linkage between the two frequency components.