Interactions Between MJO Variability and Equatorial Waves

Modern day weather forecasting has achieved a great deal of success; however, as forecasting time increases from days out to weeks out, the accuracy begins to falter. Our current understanding of atmospheric dynamics, especially in the tropics, still has several holes and gaps, which contribute to the inaccuracies within modern day forecasting models. The most prominent of these holes revolve around our knowledge of tropical convection and precipitation. With weather affecting the lives of billions of people across the globe, it is paramount that we fill these holes, in order to better predict weather patterns across the globe. The goal of this proposed research is to fill in some of the gaps of our current understanding of the tropical atmosphere. We plan to develop quantitative trends for the mechanisms of the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO), by analyzing how its variability interacts with equatorial waves. To do this, we will analyze observed OLR data in various manipulated scenarios, using wavenumber frequency power spectra. Our efforts will investigate various trends between MJO variability and equatorial waves, in hopes of improving modern weather prediction and forecasting skill.