Changes in a modeled MJO with idealized global warming

This study estimates how the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) will change with uniform global warming of 2 and 4 K at the Earth surface using an aqua-planet version of the NCAR CAM2 implemented with the Tiedtke convection scheme. Solar insolation is specified at the vernal equinox with a diurnal cycle. Thirty-year integrations are carried out for each case and the last 20-year’s results are used for analysis. For the warmer cases, the modeled MJO’s eastward propagation remains dominant at zonal wave numbers 1–4, and notable increase occurs in variance, power spectra, and the number of prominent MJO events. The convective heating is enhanced more in upper troposphere, and the MJO power spectra increase more on 20–30 days than on 30–60 days. In all cases, composite life cycles of prominent MJO events show that the anomalous surface latent heat flux lags precipitation by about 90° in phase, characterizing the nonlinear wind induced surface heat exchange (WISHE) to destabilize the MJO. Interacting with a warmer surface in the 4 K case, perturbations of zonal wind and temperature at bottom model level contribute to the nonlinear WISHE coherently with the latent heat flux. Meanwhile anomalous boundary layer convergence leads precipitation by some 45° in phase, indicating the frictional moisture convergence to maintain the enhanced MJO.     

Evaluating climate change at the Croatian Adriatic from observations and regional climate models’ simulations

The 2m temperature (T2m) and precipitation from five regional climate models (RCMs), which participated in the ENSEMBLES project and were integrated at a 25-km horizontal resolution, are compared with observed climatological data from 13 stations located in the Croatian coastal zone. The twentieth century climate was simulated by forcing RCMs with identical boundary conditions from the ERA-40 reanalysis and the ECHAM5/MPI-OM global climate model (GCM); climate change in the twenty-first century is based on the A1B scenario and assessed from the GCM-forced RCMs’ integrations. When forced by ERA-40, most RCMs exhibit cold bias in winter which contributes to an overestimation of the T2m annual cycle amplitude and the errors in interannual variability are in all RCMs smaller than those in the climatological mean. All models underestimate observed warming trends in the period 1951–2010. The largest precipitation biases coincide with locations/seasons with small observed amounts but large precipitation amounts near high orography are relatively well reproduced. When forced by the same GCM all RCMs exhibit a warming in the cold half-year and a cooling (or weak warming) in the warm period, implying a strong impact of GCM boundary forcing. The future eastern Adriatic climate is characterised by a warming, up to +5 °C towards the end of the twenty-first century; for precipitation, no clear signal is evident in the first half of the twenty-first century, but a reduction in precipitation during summer prevails in the second half. It is argued that land-sea contrast and complex coastal configuration of the Croatian coast, i.e. multitude of island and well indented coastline, have a major impact on small-scale variability. Orography plays important role only at small number of coastal locations. We hypothesise that the parameterisations related to land surface processes and soil hydrology have relatively stronger impact on variability than orography at those locations that include a relatively large fraction of land (most coastal stations), but affecting less strongly locations at the Adriatic islands.     

Regional climate simulations for the European Alpine Region��sensitivity of precipitation to large-scale flow conditions of driving input data

The MM5 modelling system has been used to perform regional climate simulations over Western Europe on a 45-km grid for the years 1971 to 2000. We focus our analysis on the impact of the driving input data on simulated precipitation in the Alpine area. Using ERA40 reanalysis data, the MM5 climatology of precipitation compares reasonably well with an observational climatology for the Alpine region. Switching to an ECHAM5 climate simulation as driving data induces excessive overprediction by up to 80% in the colder seasons there, primarily over the Alpine slopes. The large-scale flow provided by the global datasets revealed moderate differences indicating an increased number of low-pressure systems travelling from the Atlantic into the Alpine region for ECHAM5 compared with ERA40. Mean seasonal 700-hPa wind speeds correspondingly showed higher values for the ECHAM5 driven simulation in the central Alps. Partitioning three-hourly 700-hPa winds according to direction and speed in the central Alps specifically revealed a distinct shift to stronger westerly and north-westerly winds. Furthermore, aggregating three-hourly rainfall amounts to the same wind direction and wind speed intervals as for the wind statistics revealed strongly intensified precipitation due to the overly intense westerly winds, implying too intense orographic precipitation enhancement.     

The MJO and global warming: a study in CCSM4

The change in Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) amplitude and variance in response to anthropogenic climate change is assessed in the 1° nominal resolution community climate system model, version 4 (CCSM4), which has a reasonable representation of the MJO characteristics both dynamically and statistically. The twentieth century CCSM4 run is compared with the warmest twenty-first century projection (representative concentration pathway 8.5, or RCP8.5). The last 20 years of each simulation are compared in their MJO characteristics, including spatial variance distributions of winds, precipitation and outgoing longwave radiation, histograms of event amplitude, phase and duration, and composite maps of phases. The RCP8.5 run exhibits increased variance in intraseasonal precipitation, larger-amplitude MJO events, stronger MJO rainfall in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, and a greater frequency of MJO occurrence for phases corresponding to enhanced rainfall in the Indian Ocean sector. These features are consistent with the concept of an increased magnitude for the hydrological cycle under greenhouse warming conditions. Conversely, the number of active MJO days decreases and fewer weak MJO events occur in the future climate state. These results motivate further study of these changes since tropical rainfall variability plays such an important role in the region’s socio-economic well being.     

青藏高原夏季500hPa纬向风的时空演变特征及其与我国降水的关系

本文利用NCEP/NCAR月平均再分析资料及中国160个测站月降水资料, 采用经验正交函数分解 (EOF)、相关分析、合成分析等方法, 对青藏高原夏季500 hPa纬向风近59年来的年际、 年代际变化趋势及其与我国降水的关系进行了分析。时空演变特征的分析结果表明: 自1950年以来, 青藏高原夏季500 hPa纬向风总体呈现减弱趋势, 其中在1950年代西风偏弱, 1960年代西风明显偏强, 1970年代至21世纪初西风一直处于偏弱阶段; 纬向风变化趋势的空间分布表现为高原大部分区域上空纬向风呈现减弱趋势, 其减弱趋势由东南向西北递增, 高原西北部及中部地区减弱趋势最为明显; 对高原夏季500 hPa纬向风距平时间序列作EOF分解, 得出第一特征向量的空间分布表现为整体减弱型, 其时间权重系数呈现长期正趋势; 时间系数的11年滑动平均分析表明1950年代后期到1960年代中后期纬向西风整体增强趋势比较明显, 1960年代末到21世纪初为西风减弱阶段, 且期间没有出现明显的上升或下降趋势; 时间系数的突变分析表明纬向风在1967年发生了一次较明显的减弱突变; 时间系数的小波分析表明其具有2~4年的周期, 这一周期成分在1950年代前期和1990年代末至21世纪初这两个时段比较显著。年际、 年代际尺度上高原夏季500 hPa纬向风减弱与我国降水关系的分析均表明: 高原纬向风减弱时长江中下游以北的我国部分地区降水偏少, 以东北和华北表现明显, 长江中下游以南地区降水明显偏多, 降水场与大气环流、 水汽通量散度场都有较好的配置关系。     

An assessment of future dryness over Korea based on the ECHAM5-RegCM3 model chain under A1B emission scenario

We analyze the future dryness over Korea based on the projected temperature and precipitation. For fine-scale climate information, the ECHAM5/MPI-OM A1B simulation has been dynamically downscaled using the RegCM3 double-nested system. A 130-year long-term climatology (1971?C2100) from the mother domain (East Asia: 60 km) and nested domain (South Korea: 20 km) is discussed. Based on the intercomparison with CMIP3 participant models, the ECHAM5/MPI-OM provides climatic change information over the East Asia that is not markedly different from other projections. However, the reduction of summer precipitation over Korea is rather different with ensemble mean of CMIP3 participant models. The downscaled results generally follow the behavior of ECHAM5/MPIOM, but substantial fine-scale details are found in the spatial pattern and the change signals become more enhanced at the local scale. In the future projection, significant warming is found regardless of the season and region while the change in precipitation shows a mixed feature with both increasing and decreasing patterns. The increase of temperature enhances the evapotranspiration, and hence the actual water stress becomes more pronounced in the warmer climate. This is related to the negative trends of the self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) to measure the drought condition in Korea. Although PDSI is overall associated with the precipitation variation, its long-term trend tends to be modulated by the temperature trend. It is confirmed that the detrended temperature is shown to mask the decreasing tendency of the PDSI. The result indicates that without an increase in precipitation appropriate for atmospheric moisture demand, future dryness is a more likely condition under global warming.     

MJO prediction in the NCEP Climate Forecast System version 2

The Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the primary mode of tropical intraseasonal climate variability and has significant modulation of global climate variations and attendant societal impacts. Advancing prediction of the MJO using state of the art observational data and modeling systems is thus a necessary goal for improving global intraseasonal climate prediction. MJO prediction is assessed in the NOAA Climate Forecast System version 2 (CFSv2) based on its hindcasts initialized daily for 1999–2010. The analysis focuses on MJO indices taken as the principal components of the two leading EOFs of combined 15°S–15°N average of 200-hPa zonal wind, 850-hPa zonal wind and outgoing longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere. The CFSv2 has useful MJO prediction skill out to 20 days at which the bivariate anomaly correlation coefficient (ACC) drops to 0.5 and root-mean-square error (RMSE) increases to the level of the prediction with climatology. The prediction skill also shows a seasonal variation with the lowest ACC during the boreal summer and highest ACC during boreal winter. The prediction skills are evaluated according to the target as well as initial phases. Within the lead time of 10 days the ACC is generally greater than 0.8 and RMSE is less than 1 for all initial and target phases. At longer lead time, the model shows lower skills for predicting enhanced convection over the Maritime Continent and from the eastern Pacific to western Indian Ocean. The prediction skills are relatively higher for target phases when enhanced convection is in the central Indian Ocean and the central Pacific. While the MJO prediction skills are improved in CFSv2 compared to its previous version, systematic errors still exist in the CFSv2 in the maintenance and propagation of the MJO including (1) the MJO amplitude in the CFSv2 drops dramatically at the beginning of the prediction and remains weaker than the observed during the target period and (2) the propagation in the CFSv2 is too slow. Reducing these errors will be necessary for further improvement of the MJO prediction.     

The Madden–Julian oscillation in ECHAM4 coupled and uncoupled general circulation models

The Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) dominates tropical variability on timescales of 30–70 days. During the boreal winter/spring, it is manifested as an eastward propagating disturbance, with a strong convective signature over the eastern hemisphere. The space–time structure of the MJO is analyzed using simulations with the ECHAM4 atmospheric general circulation model run with observed monthly mean sea-surface temperatures (SSTs), and coupled to three different ocean models. The coherence of the eastward propagation of MJO convection is sensitive to the ocean model to which ECHAM4 is coupled. For ECHAM4/OPYC and ECHO-G, models for which ~100 years of daily data is available, Monte Carlo sampling indicates that their metrics of eastward propagation are different at the 1% significance level. The flux-adjusted coupled simulations, ECHAM4/OPYC and ECHO-G, maintain a more realistic mean-state, and have a more realistic MJO simulation than the nonadjusted scale interaction experiment (SINTEX) coupled runs. The SINTEX model exhibits a cold bias in Indian Ocean and tropical West Pacific Ocean sea-surface temperature of ~0.5°C. This cold bias affects the distribution of time-mean convection over the tropical eastern hemisphere. Furthermore, the eastward propagation of MJO convection in this model is not as coherent as in the two models that used flux adjustment or when compared to an integration of ECHAM4 with prescribed observed SST. This result suggests that simulating a realistic basic state is at least as important as air–sea interaction for organizing the MJO. While all of the coupled models simulate the warm (cold) SST anomalies that precede (succeed) the MJO convection, the interaction of the components of the net surface heat flux that lead to these anomalies are different over the Indian Ocean. The ECHAM4/OPYC model in which the atmospheric model is run at a horizontal resolution of T42, has eastward propagating zonal wind anomalies and latent heat flux anomalies. However, the integrations with ECHO-G and SINTEX, which used T30 atmospheres, produce westward propagation of the latent heat flux anomalies, contrary to reanalysis. It is suggested that the differing ability of the models to represent the near-surface westerlies over the Indian Ocean is related to the different horizontal resolutions of the atmospheric model employed.     

ENSO teleconnections in projections of future climate in ECHAM5/MPI-OM

The teleconnections of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in future climate projections are investigated using results of the coupled climate model ECHAM5/MPI-OM. For this, the IPCC SRES scenario A1B and a quadrupled CO₂ simulation are considered. It is found that changes of the mean state in the tropical Pacific are likely to condition ENSO teleconnections in the Pacific North America (PNA) region and in the North Atlantic European (NAE) region. With increasing greenhouse gas emissions the changes of the mean states in the tropical and sub-tropical Pacific are El Niño-like in this particular model. Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific are increased predominantly in its eastern part and redistribute the precipitation further eastward. The dynamical response of the atmosphere is such that the equatorial east–west (Walker) circulation and the eastern Pacific inverse Hadley circulation are decreased. Over the subtropical East Pacific and North Atlantic the 200 hPa westerly wind is substantially increased. Composite maps of different climate parameters for positive and negative ENSO events are used to reveal changes of the ENSO teleconnections. Mean sea level pressure and upper tropospheric zonal winds indicate an eastward shift of the well-known teleconnection patterns in the PNA region and an increasing North Atlantic oscillation (NAO) like response over the NAE region. Surface temperature and precipitation underline this effect, particularly over the North Pacific and the central North Atlantic. Moreover, in the NAE region the 200 hPa westerly wind is increasingly related to the stationary wave activity. Here the stationary waves appear NAO-like.     

MJO structure associated with the higher-order CEOF modes

The real-time multivariate Madden–Julian oscillation (RMM; MJO) index has been widely employed to monitor the amplitude, phase, and time evolution of MJO events, as the index is formulated from the leading two combined-empirical orthogonal function (CEOF) modes of daily anomalous OLR and 850- and 200-hPa zonal winds, and the modes describe the MJO dynamics well. These two CEOF modes, however, are known to dominate in power spectra at zonal wavenumber one and may underestimate the power and structure at wavenumbers 2–5 where many MJO events are also prominent. This study approximated a baseline for MJO by applying band-pass filters to daily anomalies on 30–100 day periods and at 1–5 eastward propagating waves, as slightly different bands led to the same conclusions. Following the procedures to develop the RMM index, the daily anomalous data were derived and subjected to the CEOF analysis with all modes archived for diagnosis. Different numbers of the leading modes were compared in explained variance, standard deviation (STD), and wavenumber power spectra to describe the overall MJO magnitude and structure, and on the Hovmöller diagrams to represent the evolution of three distinct MJO events. Results show that the two leading CEOF modes explain only a small portion of the power spectra at wavenumbers 2–5. This spectral leakage notably reduces the MJO amplitude, particularly of the OLR in the western Pacific. The CEOF modes 3–10 can withhold power sufficiently such that the anomalies reconstructed by the first 10 modes contribute most of the baseline variance; their structures agree well with the baseline by constituting nearly the same proportion in the region from the central Indian Ocean to the dateline and by providing more complete evolutions of the three MJO events on the Hovmöller diagrams. Meanwhile, these modes introduce a notable amount of power for the equatorial Rossby and Kelvin waves that are partially embedded in the evolution of MJO. The first 50 of the total 432 CEOF modes retain all variance of the baseline MJO, while those higher than 10 contain less information and more noise and can be discarded. Furthermore, this study indicated that the longitudinal STD of the reconstructed anomalies detects the MJO phases and magnitudes in the western Pacific with more physical meaning and in better agreement with the Hovmöller diagrams than the RMM-like amplitude. The results provide an integral figure of the MJO structure from the CEOF analysis and a more robust RMM framework for monitoring the MJO’s evolution in real time and for validating its numerical forecast and simulations.     

Simulations of the Madden–Julian oscillation in four pairs of coupled and uncoupled global models

The status of the numerical reproduction of the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) by current global models was assessed through diagnoses of four pairs of coupled and uncoupled simulations. Slow eastward propagation of the MJO, especially in low-level zonal wind, is realistic in all these simulations. However, the simulated MJO suffers from several common problems. The MJO signal in precipitation is generally too weak and often eroded by an unrealistic split of an equatorial maximum of precipitation into a double ITCZ structure over the western Pacific. The MJO signal in low-level zonal wind, on the other hand, is sometimes too strong over the eastern Pacific but too weak over the Indian Ocean. The observed phase relationship between precipitation and low-level zonal wind associated with the MJO in the western Pacific and their coherence in general are not reproduced by the models. The seasonal migration in latitude of MJO activity is missing in most simulations. Air–sea coupling generally strengthens the simulated eastward propagating signal, but its effects on the phase relationship and coherence between precipitation and low-level zonal wind, and on their geographic distributions, seasonal cycles, and interannual variability are inconsistent among the simulations. Such inconsistency cautions generalization of results from MJO simulations using a single model. In comparison to observations, biases in the simulated MJO appear to be related to biases in the background state of mean precipitation, low-level zonal wind, and boundary-layer moisture convergence. This study concludes that, while the realistic simulations of the eastward propagation of the MJO are encouraging, reproducing other fundamental features of the MJO by current global models remains an unmet challenge.

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Atmospheric blocking and its relation to jet changes in a future climate

The future changes of atmospheric blocking over the Euro-Atlantic sector, diagnosed from an ensemble of 17 global-climate simulations obtained with the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model, are shown to be largely explainable from the change of the 500 hPa mean zonal circulation and its variance. The reduction of the blocking frequency over the Atlantic and the increased frequency of easterly upper-level flow poleward of 60°N are well explained by the changes of mean zonal circulation. In winter and autumn an additional downstream shift of the frequency maximum is simulated. This is also seen in a subset of the CMIP5 models with RCP8.5. To explain this downstream shift requires the inclusion of the changing variance. It is suggested that the increased downstream variance is caused by the stronger, more eastward extending future jet, which promotes Rossby wave breaking and blocking to occur further downstream. The same relation between jet-strength and central-blocking longitude is found in the variability of the current climate.     

Indices for extreme events in projections of anthropogenic climate change

Indices for temperature and precipitation extremes are calculated on the basis of the global climate model ECHAM5/MPI-OM simulations of the twentieth century and SRES A1B and B1 emission scenarios for the twenty-first century. For model evaluation, the simulated indices representing the present climate were compared with indices based on observational data. This comparison shows that the model is able to realistically capture the observed climatological large-scale patterns of temperature and precipitation indices, although the quality of the simulations depends on the index and region under consideration. In the climate projections for the twenty-first century, all considered temperature-based indices, minimum Tmin, maximum Tmax, and the frequency of tropical nights, show a significant increase worldwide. Similarly, extreme precipitation, as represented by the maximum 5-day precipitation and the 95th percentile of precipitation, is projected to increase significantly in most regions of the world, especially in those that are relatively wet already under present climate conditions. Analogously, dry spells increase particularly in those regions that are characterized by dry conditions in present-day climate. Future changes in the indices exhibit distinct regional and seasonal patterns as identified exemplarily in three European regions.     

Impact of the Equatorial Atlantic on the El Ni?o Southern Oscillation

Observations indicate that the Atlantic zonal mode influences El Ni?o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Pacific, as already suggested in previous studies. Here we demonstrate for the first time using partial coupled experiments that the Atlantic zonal mode indeed influences ENSO. The partial coupling experiments are performed by forcing the coupled general circulation model (ECHAM5/MPI-OM) with observed sea surface temperature (SST) in the Tropical Atlantic, but with full air-sea coupling allowed in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. The ensemble mean of a five member simulation reproduces the observational results well. Analysis of observations, reanalysis, and coupled model simulations all indicate the following mechanism: SST anomalies associated with the Atlantic zonal mode affect the Walker Circulation, driving westward wind anomalies over the equatorial Pacific during boreal summer. The wind stress anomalies increase the east-west thermocline slope and enhance the SST gradient across the Pacific; the Bjerknes positive feedback acts to amplify these anomalies favouring the development of a La Ni?a-like anomalies. The same mechanisms act for the cold phase of Atlantic zonal mode, but with opposite sign. In contrast to previous studies, the model shows that the influence on ENSO exists before 1970. Furthermore, no significant influence of the Tropical Atlantic on the Indian Monsoon precipitation is found in observation or model.     

POSSIBLE INFLUENCES OF THE TROPICAL INDIAN OCEAN DIPOLE ON THE EASTWARD PROPAGATION OF MJO

Based on multiple datasets, correlation and composite analyses, and case studies, this paper investigated possible influences of the Indian Ocean dipole （IOD） mode on the eastward propagation of intraseasonal oscillation in the tropical atmosphere. The results showed that （1） the 30-60 day outgoing longwave radiation anomalies in the southeastern Indian Ocean and the 30-60 day 850-hPa zonal wind anomalies over the equatorial central Indian Ocean were significantly correlated with the IOD index; （2） during positive IOD years, the anomalously cold water in the southeastern Indian Ocean and the 850-hPa anomalous easterlies over the equatorial central Indian Ocean might act as barriers to the continuously eastward propagation of the intraseasonal convection, which interrupts the Madden-Julian oscillation （MJO） propagation in the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean and western Pacific; and （3） during negative IOD years, the anomalously warm water in the southeastern Indian Ocean and the low-level westerly anomalies over the equatorial central Indian Ocean favor the eastward movement of MJO.     

Major modes of short-term climate variability in the newly developed NUIST Earth System Model (NESM)

A coupled earth system model(ESM) has been developed at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology(NUIST) by using version 5.3 of the European Centre Hamburg Model(ECHAM), version 3.4 of the Nucleus for European Modelling of the Ocean(NEMO), and version 4.1 of the Los Alamos sea ice model(CICE). The model is referred to as NUIST ESM1(NESM1). Comprehensive and quantitative metrics are used to assess the model's major modes of climate variability most relevant to subseasonal-to-interannual climate prediction. The model's assessment is placed in a multi-model framework. The model yields a realistic annual mean and annual cycle of equatorial SST, and a reasonably realistic precipitation climatology, but has difficulty in capturing the spring–fall asymmetry and monsoon precipitation domains. The ENSO mode is reproduced well with respect to its spatial structure, power spectrum, phase locking to the annual cycle, and spatial structures of the central Pacific(CP)-ENSO and eastern Pacific(EP)-ENSO; however, the equatorial SST variability,biennial component of ENSO, and the amplitude of CP-ENSO are overestimated. The model captures realistic intraseasonal variability patterns, the vertical-zonal structures of the first two leading predictable modes of Madden–Julian Oscillation(MJO), and its eastward propagation; but the simulated MJO speed is significantly slower than observed. Compared with the T42 version, the high resolution version(T159) demonstrates improved simulation with respect to the climatology, interannual variance, monsoon–ENSO lead–lag correlation, spatial structures of the leading mode of the Asian–Australian monsoon rainfall variability, and the eastward propagation of the MJO.     

全球增暖背景下2050年前长江流域气候趋势预估

根据ECHAM5/ MPI-OM模式对长江流域21世纪前半叶气候变化的预估数据,分析了全流域、上游地区和中下游地区未来气候变化趋势。结果表明,长江流域气温将持续升高,尤其7-8月升温趋势明显,年平均温度升高最大幅度为2.60℃;全流域7月降水将增加,8月降水有减少趋势,未来夏季降水更加集中,不仅会增加洪涝灾害的发生机率,也有可能导致旱灾的发生。     

Assessment of upper-ocean variability and the Madden-Julian Oscillation in extended-range air-ocean coupled mesoscale simulations

Atmosphere-ocean interaction, particular the ocean response to strong atmospheric forcing, is a fundamental component of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). In this paper, we examine how model errors in previous Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) events can affect the simulation of subsequent MJO events due to increased errors that develop in the upper-ocean before the MJO initiation stage. Two fully coupled numerical simulations with 45-km and 27-km horizontal resolutions were integrated for a two-month period from November to December 2011 using the Navy’s limited area Coupled Ocean/Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS^®). There are three MJO events that occurred subsequently in early November, mid-November, and mid-December during the simulations. The 45-km simulation shows an excessive warming of the SSTs during the suppressed phase that occurs before the initiation of the second MJO event due to erroneously strong surface net heat fluxes. The simulated second MJO event stalls over the Maritime Continent which prevents the recovery of the deep mixed layer and associated barrier layer. Cross-wavelet analysis of solar radiation and SSTs reveals that the diurnal warming is absent during the second suppressed phase after the second MJO event. The mixed layer heat budget indicates that the cooling is primarily caused by horizontal advection associated with the stalling of the second MJO event and the cool SSTs fail to initiate the third MJO event. When the horizontal resolution is increased to 27-km, three MJOs are simulated and compare well with observations on multi-month timescales. The higher-resolution simulation of the second MJO event and more-realistic upper-ocean response promote the onset of the third MJO event. Simulations performed with analyzed SSTs indicate that the stalling of the second MJO in the 45-km run is a robust feature, regardless of ocean forcing, while the diurnal cycle analysis indicates that both 45-km and 27-km ocean resolutions respond realistically when provided with realistic atmospheric forcing. Thus, the problem in the 45-km simulation appears to originate in the atmosphere. Additional simulations show that while the details of the simulations are sensitive to small changes in the initial integration time, the large differences between the 45-km and 27-km runs during the suppressed phase in early December are robust.     

Impact of resolving the diurnal cycle in an ocean–atmosphere GCM. Part 2: A diurnally coupled CGCM

Coupled ocean atmosphere general circulation models (GCM) are typically coupled once every 24 h, excluding the diurnal cycle from the upper ocean. Previous studies attempting to examine the role of the diurnal cycle of the upper ocean and particularly of diurnal SST variability have used models unable to resolve the processes of interest. In part 1 of this study a high vertical resolution ocean GCM configuration with modified physics was developed that could resolve the diurnal cycle in the upper ocean. In this study it is coupled every 3 h to atmospheric GCM to examine the sensitivity of the mean climate simulation and aspects of its variability to the inclusion of diurnal ocean-atmosphere coupling. The inclusion of the diurnal cycle leads to a tropics wide increase in mean sea surface temperature (SST), with the strongest signal being across the equatorial Pacific where the warming increases from 0.2°C in the central and western Pacific to over 0.3°C in the eastern equatorial Pacific. Much of this warming is shown to be a direct consequence of the rectification of daily mean SST by the diurnal variability of SST. The warming of the equatorial Pacific leads to a redistribution of precipitation from the Inter tropical convergence zone (ITCZ) toward the equator. In the western Pacific there is an increase in precipitation between Papa new guinea and 170°E of up to 1.2 mm/day, improving the simulation compared to climatology. Pacific sub tropical cells are increased in strength by about 10%, in line with results of part 1 of this study, due to the modification of the exchange of momentum between the equatorially divergent Ekman currents and the geostropic convergence at depth, effectively increasing the dynamical response of the tropical Pacific to zonal wind stresses. During the spring relaxation of the Pacific trade winds, a large diurnal cycle of SST increases the seasonal warming of the equatorial Pacific. When the trade winds then re-intensify, the increase in the dynamical response of the ocean leads to a stronger equatorial upwelling. These two processes both lead to stronger seasonal basin scale feedbacks in the coupled system, increasing the strength of the seasonal cycle of the tropical Pacific sector by around 10%. This means that the diurnal cycle in the upper ocean plays a part in the coupled feedbacks between ocean and atmosphere that maintain the basic state and the timing of the seasonal cycle of SST and trade winds in the tropical Pacific. The Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is examined by use of a large scale MJO index, lag correlations and composites of events. The inclusion of the diurnal cycle leads to a reduction in overall MJO activity. Precipitation composites show that the MJO is stronger and more coherent when the diurnal cycle of coupling is resolved, with the propagation and different phases being far more distinct both locally and to larger lead times across the tropical Indo-Pacific. Part one of this study showed that that diurnal variability of SST is modulated by the MJO and therefore increases the intraseasonal SST response to the different phases of the MJO. Precipitation-based composites of SST variability confirm this increase in the coupled simulations. It is argued that including this has increased the thermodynamical coupling of the ocean and atmosphere on the timescale of the MJO (20–100 days), accounting for the improvement in the MJO strength and coherency seen in composites of precipitation and SST. These results show that the diurnal cycle of ocean–atmosphere interaction has profound impact on a range of up-scale variability in the tropical climate and as such, it is an important feature of the modelled climate system which is currently either neglected or poorly resolved in state of the art coupled models.