scholarly journals Moist Static Energy Budget of MJO-like Disturbances in the Atmosphere of a Zonally Symmetric Aquaplanet

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (8) ◽  
pp. 2782-2804 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Allan Andersen ◽  
Zhiming Kuang

Abstract A Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO)-like spectral feature is observed in the time–space spectra of precipitation and column-integrated moist static energy (MSE) for a zonally symmetric aquaplanet simulated with Superparameterized Community Atmospheric Model (SPCAM). This disturbance possesses the basic structural and propagation features of the observed MJO. To explore the processes involved in propagation and maintenance of this disturbance, this study analyzes the MSE budget of the disturbance. The authors observe that the disturbances propagate both eastward and poleward. The column-integrated longwave heating is the only significant source of column-integrated MSE acting to maintain the MJO-like anomaly balanced against the combination of column-integrated horizontal and vertical advection of MSE and latent heat flux. Eastward propagation of the MJO-like disturbance is associated with MSE generated by both column integrated horizontal and vertical advection of MSE, with the column longwave heating generating MSE that retards the propagation. The contribution to the eastward propagation by the column-integrated horizontal advection of MSE is dominated by synoptic eddies. Further decomposition indicates that the advection contribution to the eastward propagation is dominated by meridional advection of MSE by anomalous synoptic eddies caused by the suppression of eddy activity ahead of the MJO convection. This suppression is linked to the barotropic conversion mechanism, with the gradients of the low-frequency wind experienced by the synoptic eddies within the MJO envelope acting to modulate the eddy kinetic energy. The meridional eddy advection’s contribution to poleward propagation is dominated by the mean state’s (meridionally varying) eddy activity acting on the anomalous MSE gradients associated with the MJO.

2014 ◽  
Vol 71 (11) ◽  
pp. 4276-4291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Sobel ◽  
Shuguang Wang ◽  
Daehyun Kim

Abstract The authors analyze the column-integrated moist static energy budget over the region of the tropical Indian Ocean covered by the sounding array during the Cooperative Indian Ocean Experiment on Intraseasonal Variability in the Year 2011 (CINDY2011)/Dynamics of the Madden–Julian Oscillation (DYNAMO) field experiment in late 2011. The analysis is performed using data from the sounding array complemented by additional observational datasets for surface turbulent fluxes and atmospheric radiative heating. The entire analysis is repeated using the ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim). The roles of surface turbulent fluxes, radiative heating, and advection are quantified for the two MJO events that occurred in October and November using the sounding data; a third event in December is also studied in the ERA-Interim data. These results are consistent with the view that the MJO’s moist static energy anomalies grow and are sustained to a significant extent by the radiative feedbacks associated with MJO water vapor and cloud anomalies and that propagation of the MJO is associated with advection of moist static energy. Both horizontal and vertical advection appear to play significant roles in the events studied here. Horizontal advection strongly moistens the atmosphere during the buildup to the active phase of the October event when the low-level winds switch from westerly to easterly. Horizontal advection strongly dries the atmosphere in the wake of the active phases of the November and December events as the westerlies associated with off-equatorial cyclonic gyres bring subtropical dry air into the convective region from the west and north. Vertical advection provides relative moistening ahead of the active phase and drying behind it, associated with an increase of the normalized gross moist stability.


2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 1856-1871 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kuniaki Inoue ◽  
Larissa Back

Abstract Moist static energy (MSE) budgets on different time scales are analyzed in the TOGA COARE data using Lanczos filters to separate variability with different frequencies. Four different time scales (~2-day, ~5-day, ~10-day, and MJO time scales) are chosen based on the power spectrum of the precipitation and previous TOGA COARE studies. The lag regression-slope technique is utilized to depict characteristic patterns of the variability associated with the MSE budgets on the different time scales. This analysis illustrates that the MSE budgets behave in significantly different ways on the different time scales. On shorter time scales, the vertical advection acts as a primary driver of the recharge–discharge mechanism of column MSE. As the time scale gets longer, in contrast, the relative contributions of the other budget terms become greater, and consequently, on the MJO time scale all the budget terms have nearly the same amplitude. Specifically, these results indicate that horizontal advection plays an important role in the eastward propagation of the MJO during TOGA COARE. On the MJO time scale, the export of MSE by the vertical advection is in phase with the precipitation. On shorter time scales, the vertical velocity profile transitions from bottom heavy to top heavy, while on longer time scales, the shape becomes more constant and similar to a first-baroclinic-mode structure. This leads to a more-constant gross moist stability on longer time scales, which the authors estimate.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Lea Albright ◽  
Sandrine Bony ◽  
Bjorn Stevens ◽  
Raphaela Vogel

<p>The trades form an important link in the atmospheric energy supply, transporting moisture and momentum to the deep tropics and influencing the global hydrological cycle. Trade-wind cumuli are the most ubiquitous cloud type over tropical oceans, yet models disagree in simulating their response to warming. Our study takes advantage of extensive in-situ soundings performed during the EUREC4A campaign, which took place in the downstream trades of the North Atlantic in winter 2020. We employ 1068 dropsondes made in a ca. 2deg x 2deg area to close the moisture and energy budgets of the subcloud layer and atmospheric column. Our motivation for closing moisture and energy budgets using EUREC4A data is two-fold. First, we try to understand which large-scale environmental factors control variability in subcloud layer moisture and moist static energy, given their influence on setting convective potential. Second, we quantify the interplay between clouds and their environment through an energetic lens. The cloud radiative effect emerges as a residual from the total column moist static energy budget, yielding an energetic estimate of clouds. We quantify how this cloud radiative effect compares with coincident satellite and geometric (i.e. cloud fraction) estimates of cloudiness, varies on different scales, and relates to large-scale environmental conditions.</p>


2016 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 4.1-4.18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric D. Maloney ◽  
Chidong Zhang

Abstract This chapter reviews Professor Michio Yanai’s contributions to the discovery and science of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO). Professor Yanai’s work on equatorial waves played an inspirational role in the MJO discovery by Roland Madden and Paul Julian. Professor Yanai also made direct and important contributions to MJO research. These research contributions include work on the vertically integrated moist static energy budget, cumulus momentum transport, eddy available potential energy and eddy kinetic energy budgets, and tropical–extratropical interactions. Finally, Professor Yanai left a legacy through his students, who continue to push the bounds of MJO research.


2016 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 743-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yukari Sumi ◽  
Hirohiko Masunaga

Abstract A moist static energy (MSE) budget analysis is applied to quasi-2-day waves to examine the effects of thermodynamic processes on the wave propagation mechanism. The 2-day waves are defined as westward inertia–gravity (WIG) modes identified with filtered geostationary infrared measurements, and the thermodynamic parameters and MSE budget variables computed from reanalysis data are composited with respect to the WIG peaks. The composite horizontal and vertical MSE structures are overall as theoretically expected from WIG wave dynamics. A prominent horizontal MSE advection is found to exist, although the wave dynamics is mainly regulated by vertical advection. The vertical advection decreases MSE around the times of the convective peak, plausibly resulting from the first baroclinic mode associated with deep convection. Normalized gross moist stability (NGMS) is used to examine the thermodynamic processes involving the large-scale dynamics and convective heating. NGMS gradually decreases to zero before deep convection and reaches a maximum after the convection peak, where low (high) NGMS leads (lags) deep convection. The decrease in NGMS toward zero before the occurrence of active convection suggests an increasingly efficient conversion from convective heating to large-scale dynamics as the wave comes in, while the increase afterward signifies that this linkage swiftly dies out after the peak.


2016 ◽  
Vol 121 (14) ◽  
pp. 8350-8373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte A. DeMott ◽  
James J. Benedict ◽  
Nicholas P. Klingaman ◽  
Steven J. Woolnough ◽  
David A. Randall

2005 ◽  
Vol 62 (11) ◽  
pp. 3839-3859 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dehai Luo

Abstract In a series of previous papers, an envelope Rossby soliton theory was formulated to investigate the interaction between a preexisting planetary wave and synoptic-scale eddies leading to a typical blocking flow. In this paper, numerical and analytical studies are presented in order to examine the interactive relationship between an isolated vortex pair block and deformed synoptic-scale eddies during their interaction. The deformed blocked flow and eddies are found to satisfy the wavenumber conservation theorem. It is shown that the feedback by a blocked flow on the preexisting synoptic eddies gives rise to two types of eddies: one is the Z-type eddies with a meridional monopole structure that appears at the middle of the channel and the other is the M-type eddies with a meridional tripole structure that have long wavelength and large amplitude. Both the total wavenumber of the blocked flow and M-type eddies and the total wavenumber of the Z- and M-type eddies are conserved. The M- and Z-type eddies are compressed and elongated, respectively, as the blocked flow is elongated zonally during its onset phase, but the reverse is observed during the decay phase. The zonally elongated Z-type eddies are found to counteract the compressed M-type eddies in the blocking region, but strengthen the M-type eddies upstream, causing the split of eddies around the blocking region. In addition, it is also verified theoretically that the blocked flow and synoptic-eddy activity are symbiotically dependent upon one another. The deformed (Z and M type) eddies also display a low-frequency oscillation in amplitude, wavenumber, group velocity, and phase speed, consistent with the blocked flow by the eddy forcing. Thus, it appears that the low-frequency eddy forcing is responsible for the low-frequency variability of the blocked flow and synoptic-eddy activity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (22) ◽  
pp. 9735-9748
Author(s):  
Jane E. Smyth ◽  
Yi Ming

AbstractThe tropical atmospheric circulation and attendant rainfall exhibit seasonally dependent responses to increasing temperatures. Understanding changes in the South American monsoon system is of particular interest given the sensitivity of the southern Amazon rainforest to changes in dry season length. We utilize the latest Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Atmospheric Model (GFDL AM4) to analyze the response of the South American monsoon to uniform sea surface temperature (SST) warming. SST warming is a poorly understood yet impactful component of greenhouse gas–induced climate change. Region-mean rainfall declines by 11%, and net precipitation (precipitation minus evaporation) declines by 40%, during the monsoon onset season (September–November), producing a more severe dry season. The column-integrated moist static energy (MSE) budget helps elucidate the physical mechanisms of the simulated drying. Based on the seasonal analysis, precipitation reductions tend to occur when 1) a convecting region’s climatological MSE export is dominated by horizontal rather than vertical advection, and 2) the horizontal MSE advection increases in the perturbed climate, impeding ascent. On a synoptic scale, the South American low-level jet strengthens and exports more moisture from the monsoon sector, exacerbating spring drying.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (16) ◽  
pp. 4105-4120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Hales ◽  
J. David Neelin ◽  
Ning Zeng

Abstract Paleoevidence indicates that generally wetter conditions existed in the Sahara during the mid-Holocene. Climate modeling studies addressing this issue generally agree that mid-Holocene values of the earth’s orbital parameters favored an enhanced North African summer monsoon but also suggest that land surface and vegetation feedbacks must have been important factors. Attempts to reproduce the “green” mid-Holocene Sahara in model studies with interactive vegetation may be interpreted to indicate that the problem is highly sensitive to the atmospheric dynamics of each model employed. In other work, dynamical mechanisms have been hypothesized to affect monsoon poleward extent, particularly ventilation, by import of low-moist static energy air to the continent. Here, interactive vegetation and the ventilation mechanism are studied in an intermediate complexity atmospheric model coupled to simple land and vegetation components. Interactive vegetation is found to be effective at enhancing the precipitation and vegetation amount in regions where the monsoon has advanced because of changes in orbital parameters or ventilation yet not very effective in moving the monsoon boundary if ventilation is strong. The poleward extent of the mid-Holocene monsoon and the steppe boundary are primarily controlled by the strength of ventilation in the atmospheric model. Within this boundary, the largest changes in monsoon precipitation and vegetation occur when interactive vegetation and reduced ventilation act simultaneously, as these greatly reinforce each other.


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