Seasonal Extreme Rainfall Over Indian Monsoon Region: A Moisture Budget Analysis to Distinguish the Role of ENSO and non-ENSO Forcing

Indian summer monsoon rainfall (ISMR) variability of ±10% of its long-term mean leads to flood and drought, affecting the life and economic situation of the country. It is already established that the interannual variability of ISMR is influenced by large scale boundary forcing such as SST anomalies of tropical Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The ISMR association between Pacific SST anomalies in the form of El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is only studied in detail. Meanwhile, the present and previous studies show that the ENSO accounts for around 50% of the extreme years, while the other half is associated with other processes. A differentiation between extremes induced by ENSO and non-ENSO processes are attempted here with the help of moisture and moist static energy budget. The significant contribution to the rainfall extremes comes from moisture advection induced by anomalous winds generated by the boundary forcing and the secondary contribution from moisture convergence. For the non-ENSO cases, there is a contribution from local fluxes, which are not prominent in the cases of ENSO induced cases. In the ENSO cases, anomalous winds are from the equatorial central Pacific, while EQWIN/IOD cases influence extremes through the local evaporation and moisture advection from the Indian Ocean. Extreme years independent of ENSO/IOD/ EQWIN have moisture advection from the anomalous winds across Africa and the Atlantic and are associated with moisture advection toward the northern parts of India. These differences in moisture processes are responsible for the difference in rainfall distribution over India also.

Hemispheric shift of the zonal mean ITCZ during the last deglaciation

<div> <p>The zonal-annual mean inter-hemispheric convergence zone (ITCZ) is located in the northern hemisphere in the modern climate. A transient simulation of the last deglaciation using the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model (MPI-ESM), suggests that the ITCZ was located in the southern hemisphere 14 kyrs ago. This shift is due to a substantial cooling of the northern hemisphere relative the southern hemisphere, after the release of melt water pulse 1a. The ITCZ compensates for these changes in the surface temperature by shifting south, thereby leading to a northward atmospheric heat transport away from the southern hemisphere. Along with the southward shift, the intensity of the precipitation within the ITCZ decreases. These changes in the intensity of precipitation can be explained by using a framework based on the moist static energy budget. We find that these changes are primarily related to the changes in the large-scale vertical motion of the atmosphere in the tropics. This affects the vertical transport of the moist static energy, and hence total gross moist stability (TGMS). </p> </div>

Quantifying the interplay of clouds and their environment through an energetic lens during EUREC4A

<p>The trades form an important link in the atmospheric energy supply, transporting moisture and momentum to the deep tropics and influencing the global hydrological cycle. Trade-wind cumuli are the most ubiquitous cloud type over tropical oceans, yet models disagree in simulating their response to warming. Our study takes advantage of extensive in-situ soundings performed during the EUREC4A campaign, which took place in the downstream trades of the North Atlantic in winter 2020. We employ 1068 dropsondes made in a ca. 2deg x 2deg area to close the moisture and energy budgets of the subcloud layer and atmospheric column. Our motivation for closing moisture and energy budgets using EUREC4A data is two-fold. First, we try to understand which large-scale environmental factors control variability in subcloud layer moisture and moist static energy, given their influence on setting convective potential. Second, we quantify the interplay between clouds and their environment through an energetic lens. The cloud radiative effect emerges as a residual from the total column moist static energy budget, yielding an energetic estimate of clouds. We quantify how this cloud radiative effect compares with coincident satellite and geometric (i.e. cloud fraction) estimates of cloudiness, varies on different scales, and relates to large-scale environmental conditions.</p>

Tropical Precipitation Evolution in a Buoyancy-Budget Framework

Observations have shown that tropical convection is influenced by fluctuations in temperature and moisture in the lower free-troposphere (LFT, 600–850 hPa), as well as moist enthalpy (ME) fluctuations beneath the 850 hPa level, referred to as the deep boundary layer (DBL, 850–1000 hPa). A framework is developed that consolidates these three quantities within the context of the buoyancy of an entraining plume. A “plume buoyancy equation” is derived based on a relaxed version of the weak-temperature gradient (WTG) approximation. Analysis of this equation using quantities derived from the Dynamics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (DYNAMO) sounding array data reveals that processes occurring within the DBL and the LFT contribute nearly equally to the evolution of plume buoyancy, indicating that processes that occur in both layers are critical to the evolution of tropical convection. Adiabatic motions play an important role in the evolution of buoyancy both at the daily and longer timescales and are comparable in magnitude to horizontal moisture advection and vertical moist static energy advection by convection. The plume buoyancy equation may explain convective coupling at short timescales in both temperature and moisture fluctuations and can be used to complement the commonly-used moist static energy budget, which emphasizes the slower evolution of the convective envelope in tropical motion systems.

The Signature of Shallow Circulations, Not Cloud Radiative Effects, in the Spatial Distribution of Tropical Precipitation

Recent research suggests cloud–radiation interaction as key for intermodel differences in tropical precipitation change with warming. This motivates the hypothesis that intermodel differences in the climatology of precipitation, and in its response to warming, should reduce in the absence of cloud–radiation interaction. The hypothesis is explored with the aquaplanet simulations by the Clouds On-Off Klimate Intercomparison Experiment performed by seven general circulation models, wherein atmospheric cloud radiative effects (ACREs) are active (ACRE-on) and inactive (ACRE-off). Contrary to expectation, models’ climatology of tropical precipitation are more diverse in the ACRE-off experiments, as measured by the position of the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), the subtropical precipitation minima, and the associated organization of the tropical circulation. Also the direction of the latitudinal shift of the ITCZ differs more in simulations with inactive cloud radiative effects. Nevertheless, both in ACRE-on and ACRE-off, the same relationship between tropical precipitation and the mean vertical velocity (zonally, temporally, and vertically averaged) emerges in all models. An analysis framework based on the moist static energy budget and used in the moisture space is then developed to understand what controls the distribution of the mean vertical velocity. The results suggest that intermodel differences in tropical circulation and zonal-mean precipitation patterns are most strongly associated with intermodel differences in the representation of shallow circulations that connect dry and moist regions.

Variations of the Moist Static Energy Budget of the Tropical Indian Ocean Atmospheric Boundary Layer

The atmospheric circulation depends on poorly understood interactions between the tropical atmospheric boundary layer (BL) and convection. The surface moist static energy (MSE) source (130 W m−2, of which 120 W m−2 is evaporation) to the tropical marine BL is balanced by upward MSE flux at the BL top that is the source for deep convection. Important for modeling tropical convection and circulation is whether MSE enters the free troposphere by dry turbulent processes originating within the boundary layer or by motions generated by moist deep convection in the free troposphere. Here, highly resolved observations of the BL quantify the MSE fluxes in approximate agreement with recent cloud-resolving models, but the fluxes depend on convective conditions. In convectively suppressed (weak precipitation) conditions, entrainment and downdraft fluxes export equal shares (60 W m−2) of MSE from the BL. Downdraft fluxes are found to increase 50%, and entrainment to decrease, under strongly convective conditions. Variable entrainment and downdraft MSE fluxes between the BL and convective clouds must both be considered for modeling the climate.