Tropic World

Peter’s many contributions to tropical meteorology include some on the radiative interactions of clouds with the atmosphere, tropical circulations, and ocean atmosphere interactions. What circulation would the atmosphere assume, if the Earth was non-rotating, covered with a mixed-layer ocean, and the insolation was globally uniform? How does the answer depend on the mean temperature? To establish an efficient mechanism for moving energy upward where it can be radiated to space from the atmosphere, and to satisfy the laws of thermodynamics, the system organizes itself into a warm pool and a colder pool. Convection occurs around the warmer pool. The SST and Net TOA radiation are almost uniform in the warm pool area. This hypothetical world provides insights into basic questions like, “Why does the warm pool exist?” “Why is the net TOA radiation uniform in the warm pool?” “How should the high cloud fraction in the warm pool change in a warmed climate?”