Apparent coupling of oceanic Kelvin waves and atmospheric convection

It has been observed that some Kelvin waves in the Pacific Ocean are initially forced by the Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO); associated westerly wind bursts appear to become coupled to atmospheric convection in a manner that further amplifies the Kelvin wave. To better understand this process, we have selected a representative case from a set of 20 cool season (October to April) events from 1974 to the present. This event exhibited a strong oceanic Kelvin wave coincident with an envelope of enhanced atmospheric convection which evolved eastward together from November 1986 to January 1987, across the region from 120E to about 150W. We examine the progression of some associated fields (eg: convection, zonal wind, warm oceanic advection) and compare the observed patterns to those suggested by Lau and Shen (1988)'s simple model for atmosphere/ocean coupling.