Friday, 3 May 2002: 9:30 AM
Surface heat fluxes during the MJO and their effects on the oceanic mixed layer in the Tropical Eastern Hemisphere.
Intraseasonally varying surface heat fluxes associated with the Madden-Julian
Oscillation (MJO) during boreal winter and their spatial and temporal
relationships with concomitant Sea Surface Temperature (SST) anomalies are
investigated over a larger domain than has previously been examined.
Due to the air-sea interaction nature of these processes the MJO is defined by
the combined principal component analysis of surface fields, namely zonal and
meridional wind and SST.
Throughout the propagation path of the MJO, increased shortwave radiation (SWR)
is largely in quadrature with increased SST, which in turn is in quadrature with
enhanced convection, indicating the possibility of a two-way self sustaining
mechanism for the MJO.
The structure of the MJO in surface latent heat flux is dependent on the
climatological surface winds. These reverse direction in the Eastern Indian
Ocean, so that large scale surface wind anomalies superimposed lead to a dipole
structure in the heat flux. This structure, when considered with the
accompanying SWR anomaly, may lead to the apparent standing oscillation observed
in the MJO SST composite in this region.
A 1D ocean model was forced at each grid point with the composite heat fluxes.
The results will be compared with the results of the analysis.
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