Exploration of turbulent heat fluxes and wind stress curl in WRF and ERA-Interim during wintertime mesoscale wind events around southeastern Greenland

The strong, mesoscale tip jets and barrier winds that occur off the coast of southeastern Greenland drive large surface turbulent heat fluxes that may impact deep ocean convection. The turbulent fluxes and wind stress curl associated with 10 m wind patterns identified using the self-organizing map technique are investigated for 10 winters (1997-2007, November-December-January-February-March) in the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Reanalysis (ERA-I) and a regional simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model at 50 km. Sensible heat flux differences between WRF and ERA-I are primarily due to differences in near-surface temperature, while latent heat flux differences are driven by both moisture and wind speed differences. The largest turbulent flux differences occur over the marginal ice zone where the fluxes in WRF are larger than in ERA-I due to specified sea ice thickness that influences the near-surface atmospheric temperature and moisture;WRF has larger magnitude wind stress curl over the Irminger Sea. Patterns of strongwesterly tip jetwith barrier flowaremost likely to impact preconditioning and convection in the Irminger Sea compared to othermanifestations of westerly tip jets, and easterly tip jets are expected to have localized ocean impacts south of Cape Farewell.