“Hot Spots” in the Climate System: New Developments in the Extratropical Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction Research

This book consists of the articles from the special issue of “‘Hot Spots’ in the Climate System” in the Journal of Oceanography, Vol. 71 No. 5, 2015, comprising 9 chapters that cover a wide spectrum of topics. This spinoff book is a collection of papers on the scientific outcomes of a nationwide 5-year project funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and known internationally as the “Hot-Spot Project.” The academic achievement of the project has gained international recognition, making substantial contribution to unveiling the climatic role of warm western boundary ocean currents, including the Kuroshio, and associated oceanic fronts characterized by sharp temperature gradients and active meso-scale oceanic eddies. Specifically, those warm currents may be called “hot spots” in the climate system, as they intensively release heat and moisture to the atmosphere, thereby acting to organize clouds and precipitation systems and set conditions favorable for recurrent development of storms. This spinoff is a unique collection of the outcome of the particular project. The collected papers cover a wide range of aspects of ocean–atmosphere interaction characteristic of the oceanic fronts and continental marginal seas, unveiled through observational, theoretical, analytical, and numerical investigations. Most of the readers of the book are assumed to be researchers and graduate students who study climate dynamics, physical oceanography, atmospheric science, and air–sea interaction.

Table of Contents:
Oceanic fronts and jets around Japan: a review.- Climatological mean features and interannual to decadal variability of ring formations in the Kuroshio Extension region.- Marine atmospheric boundary layer and low-level cloud responses to the Kuroshio Extension front in the early summer of 2012: three-vessel simultaneous observations and numerical simulations.- Heat and salt budgets of the mixed layer around the Subarctic Front of the North Pacific Ocean.- Impact of downward heat penetration below the shallow seasonal thermocline on the sea surface temperature.- Early summertime interannual variability in surface and subsurface temperature in the North Pacific.- Local wind effect on the Kuroshio path state off the southeastern coast of Kyushu.- Unusually rapid intensification of Typhoon Man-yi in 2013 under pre-existing warm-water conditions near the Kuroshio front south of Japan.- Atlantic–Pacific asymmetry of subsurface temperature change and frontal response of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current for the recent three decades.