Large-scale interactions among clouds, surface fluxes, and the tropical ocean mixed layer

A high resolution satellite-derived dataset has been developed for the TOGA COARE IOP that includes cloud characteristics and all components of the surface heat, freshwater and momentum fluxes. The satellite-derived values have been evaluated extensively with surface and aircraft observations obtained during TOGA COARE. The surface flux dataset has been used to force a 3-D primitive equation ocean model that includes a sophisticated mixed layer and skin SST parameterization. Simulations of the ocean during the TOGA COARE IOP have been evaluated extensively using ship and buoy observations. The combination of satellite observations and ocean simulations is examined for the TOGA COARE IFA and used to diagnose the large-scale interactions among clouds, surface fluxes, sea surface temperature, and mixed layer depth. These data are analyzed using discriminant analysis based upon cloud classification, and also by using lagged correlation matrices. The correlation matrices are used to calculate variance-covariance matrices that can be used in principal component and canonical correlation analyses. These statistical analyses are used to examine the forcing and feedback relationships between clouds, SST, and the ocean mixed layer.