Abstract
Rammasun intensified rapidly from tropical storm to super typhoon in the northern South China Sea (NSCS) before its landfall on Hainan Island. Analysis of observed data shows that the anomalous ocean upper layer warm water (WW) is important to the rapid intensification of Rammasun. During the period of Rammasun, sea surface temperature (SST) in the NSCS was much warmer than the climatological SST. The anomalous WW supplied more energy to Rammasun, resulting in its rapid intensification. Numerical simulations further confirm that the NSCS WW plays an important role in the rapid intensification of Rammasun. As the WW is removed, the intensification of Rammasun is only 25 hPa, which is 58.1% of that in the original SST-forced run.
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Foundation item: The National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China under contract Nos 2013CB430301 and 2013CB430302; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract Nos 41306024 and 41276018; the Scientific Research Fund of the Second Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration of China under contract Nos JT1301 and JG1416; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under contract No. 2013B25914; the Jiangsu Postgraduate Scientific Research and Innovation Projects under contract No. 2013B25914; the Project of Global Change and Air-Sea interaction under contract No. GASI-03-IPOVAI-04.
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Sun, J., Zuo, J., Ling, Z. et al. Role of ocean upper layer warm water in the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones: A case study of typhoon Rammasun (1409). Acta Oceanol. Sin. 35, 63–68 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-015-0761-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-015-0761-1