Cloud and Rainfall Statistics from the MJO and the ITCZ over the Indian Ocean

The MJO and the ITCZ are both distinctive forms of large-scale convective organization over the Indian Ocean. One of the surprising outcomes of the DYNAMO field campaign was that an interaction was observed between the MJO and ITCZ for the first time (Yoneyama et al. 2013). In this study, a method is developed to objectively identify the ITCZ over the Indian Ocean. The MJO is identified through a precipitation tracking method. The cloud characteristics are calculated for all identified ITCZ and MJO events from 1998-2013 using TRMM PR data establishing the climatology of organized convection over the Indian Ocean. This climatology is described in terms of ratio of stratiform and convective precipitation, and other statistics of cloud and precipitation features. The comparison of the cloud and rainfall statistics helps to determine if there is a robust regime change in convection between the ITCZ and MJO at its initiation stage.