Modeled sensitivity of the northwestern Pacific upper-ocean responses to tropical cyclones in a fully coupled climate model with varying ocean grid resolution

Tropical cyclones (TCs) actively contribute to Earth's climate, but TC-climate interactions are largely unexplored in fully-coupled models. Here we analyze the upper-ocean response to TCs using a high resolution Earth system model, in which a 0.5° atmosphere is coupled to an ocean with two different horizontal resolutions: 1° and 0.1°. The model produces realistic TCs up to category 3 in both versions of the model, and, in the northwestern Pacific region, the transient surface ocean temperature response is consistent with observations. We estimate the model’s flux-adjusted TC-induced ocean heat convergence in the northwestern Pacific is ~0.26 PW and ~0.30 PW for the low and high resolution configurations, respectively, which is within the range of previous observation-based estimates. Results point to the importance of coupled modeling approaches that account for ocean-atmosphere feedbacks, in order to develop a complete understanding of the relationship between TCs and climate