Observations of Convective Organization by the MJO

As is well-documented, the convective envelopes that made up the MJO are characterized by a variety of disturbances over a wide range of scales, ranging from mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) to convectively coupled waves (CCEWs). When examining individual MJO events, it is evident that they can be characterized by quite diverse populations of such disturbances. This diversity is not only evident between events, but also within an individual event as it evolves. We investigate the convective makeup of the MJO during the historical record of satellite data going back to 1974. Three independent techniques to assess the scale and type of disturbances within the MJO are applied using long period precipitation and satellite brightness temperature data. One approach uses a tracking algorithm that is particularly well suited to providing a census of MCSs. This can also be adapted to track CCEWs using suitably filtered data. Another metric utilizes a spatio-temporal wavelet transform that quantifies the contribution of CCEWs across an individual MJO envelope. A third technique measures the variance of various CCEWs within a given MJO event, using brightness temperature filtered for the individual modes. Results reveal that, while the MJO increases the variance of disturbances within its envelope, the distribution of these disturbances across scales and wave type appears to be remarkably uniform, on average, regardless of the technique used. To start with, while MCS characteristics vary geographically around the globe, the tracking method strongly suggests that there is nothing special about the MJO in terms of the spatial scale, lifetime, and propagation characteristics of MCSs within its envelope, other than the fact that they occur more often when the MJO is active. A similar result is obtained by measuring the variance of filtered CCEW activity within the MJO envelope versus outside of it. This occurs despite the fact that individual MJO events can vary widely in terms of the census of CCEWs and MCSs within their envelopes. Finally, the probability distribution function (pdf) of brightness temperature is analyzed with respect to the MJO. It turns out that while the MJO does modulate the pdf of brightness temperature locally, the pdfs integrated over the tropics or over the entire globe are extremely stable regardless of whether the MJO is active or not. This suggests that the while MJO substantially alters the geographic distribution of convection, it does not necessarily impact the amount of convection on a globally, perhaps as a result of a global convective-radiative balance on intraseasonal time scales.