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Intraseasonal variability in the far-east pacific: investigation of the role of air–sea coupling in a regional coupled model

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Abstract

Intraseasonal variability in the eastern Pacific warm pool in summer is studied, using a regional ocean–atmosphere model, a linear baroclinic model (LBM), and satellite observations. The atmospheric component of the model is forced by lateral boundary conditions from reanalysis data. The aim is to quantify the importance to atmospheric deep convection of local air–sea coupling. In particular, the effect of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies on surface heat fluxes is examined. Intraseasonal (20–90 day) east Pacific warm-pool zonal wind and outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) variability in the regional coupled model are correlated at 0.8 and 0.6 with observations, respectively, significant at the 99% confidence level. The strength of the intraseasonal variability in the coupled model, as measured by the variance of outgoing longwave radiation, is close in magnitude to that observed, but with a maximum located about 10° further west. East Pacific warm pool intraseasonal convection and winds agree in phase with those from observations, suggesting that remote forcing at the boundaries associated with the Madden–Julian oscillation determines the phase of intraseasonal convection in the east Pacific warm pool. When the ocean model component is replaced by weekly reanalysis SST in an atmosphere-only experiment, there is a slight improvement in the location of the highest OLR variance. Further sensitivity experiments with the regional atmosphere-only model in which intraseasonal SST variability is removed indicate that convective variability has only a weak dependence on the SST variability, but a stronger dependence on the climatological mean SST distribution. A scaling analysis confirms that wind speed anomalies give a much larger contribution to the intraseasonal evaporation signal than SST anomalies, in both model and observations. A LBM is used to show that local feedbacks would serve to amplify intraseasonal convection and the large-scale circulation. Further, Hovmöller diagrams reveal that whereas a significant dynamic intraseasonal signal enters the model domain from the west, the strong deep convection mostly arises within the domain. Taken together, the regional and linear model results suggest that in this region remote forcing and local convection–circulation feedbacks are both important to the intraseasonal variability, but ocean–atmosphere coupling has only a small effect. Possible mechanisms of remote forcing are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The Reynolds et al. 2002 data was used for legacy reasons. It is acknowledged that a product such as TMI SST or the recent high resolution NOAA SST analyses (Reynolds et al. 2007) may have been better choices to capture intraseasonal SST variability (see Sect. 5 on the strength of SST anomalies).

  2. This is a conservative and strict estimate of independent samples—it can also be argued that an independent sample has the duration of the wet phase of the MJO which is typically less than half of the total MJO period.

  3. Note that now the model data is regressed onto an OLR index derived from the model data, so as to display the interrelationship between model fields more clearly. (For reference Figs 6 and 10 show the model-observation comparison).

  4. The slightly weaker amplitudes of the anomalies in the model at non-zero lags, compared to those in observations, are not due solely to a weaker variance (as can be seen by noting that the OLR variance in the model is greater than observed in some locations, (Fig. 4a,b), but probably also due to a weaker correlation between distant points and the index box.

  5. Note that if we added a second ellipse of opposite sign to represent the weak and less-broad negative anomaly west of 110°W, the results are not significantly different, due to the smaller magnitude and spatial area of this anomaly.

  6. Further, Wang et al. (2006) show a “see-saw” oscillation between convection in the Bay of Bengal and the eastern North Pacific region investigated here.

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Acknowledgments

The constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers helped improve this paper. The majority of this work was done whilst R. J. S. and S. P. dS were at the International Pacific Research Center. S.-P. X. and R. J. S. were supported by NASA (grant NAG-10045 and JPL contract 1216010). S.-P. X., S. P. dS and R. J. S. were also supported by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) through its sponsorship of the International Pacific Research Center, and Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology through the Kyosei-7 Project. S.-P. X. received additional support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under grant NA07OAR4310257. IPRC contribution number XXX and SOEST contribution number YYY. EDM was supported under Award# NA05OAR4310006 from NOAA, and by the Climate and Large-Scale Dynamics Program of the National Science Foundation under Grants ATM-0832868 and ATM-0828531. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF, NOAA, or the Department of Commerce.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jacobs Technology, Naval Research Laboratory, Code 7320, Building 1009, Stennis Space Center, MS, 39529, USA

    R. Justin Small

  2. International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii, POST 401, 1680 East-West Rd, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    R. Justin Small & Shang-Ping Xie

  3. Department of Meteorology, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii, HIG350, 2525 Correa Rd, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Shang-Ping Xie

  4. Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Eric D. Maloney

  5. College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, 104 COAS Admin. Bldg, Corvallis, OR, 97331-5503, USA

    Simon P. de Szoeke

  6. Frontier Research for Global Change, Yokohama, Japan

    Toru Miyama

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Small, R.J., Xie, SP., Maloney, E.D. et al. Intraseasonal variability in the far-east pacific: investigation of the role of air–sea coupling in a regional coupled model. Clim Dyn 36, 867–890 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-010-0786-2

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