Characteristics of Sensible Heat and Latent Heat Fluxes over the East Sea Related with Yeongdong Heavy Snowfall Events

Abstract

To investigate the air mass modification related with Yeongdong heavy snowfall events, we examined sensible and latent heat fluxes on the East Sea, the energy exchange between atmosphere and ocean in this study. Sensible and latent heats were calculated by a bulk aerodynamic method, in which NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data and NOAA/AVHRR weekly SST data with high resolution were used. Among winter precipitation events in the Yeongdong region, 19 heavy precipitation events (1995~2001) were selected and classified into three types (mountain, cold-coastal, and warm types). Mountain-type precipitation shows highly positive anomalies of sensible and latent heats over the southwestern part of the East Sea. When separating them into the two components due to variability of wind and temperature/specific humidity, it is shown that the wind components are dominant. Cold-coastal-type precipitation also shows strong positive anomalies of sensible and latent heats over the northern part and over the central-northern part of the East Sea, respectively. It is shown that the sensible heat anomalies are caused mostly by the decrease of surface air temperature. So it can be explained that cold-coastal-type precipitation is closely related with the air mass modification due to cold air advection over warm ocean surface. But in warm-type precipitation, negative anomalies are found in the sensible and latent heat distributions. From this result, it may be postulated that warm-type precipitation is affected by the internal process of the atmosphere rather than the atmosphere-ocean interaction.