Journal ArticleDOI
A Quasi-Equilibrium Tropical Circulation Model—Formulation *
J. David Neelin,Ning Zeng +1 more
TLDR
In this article, a quasi-equilibrium tropical circulation model (QTCM) is proposed to simulate the tropical and subtropical climate variations, and the model is coupled with a one-layer land surface model with interactive soil moisture.Abstract:
A class of model for simulation and theory of the tropical atmospheric component of climate variations is introduced. These models are referred to as quasi-equilibrium tropical circulation models, or QTCMs, because they make use of approximations associated with quasi-equilibrium (QE) convective parameterizations. Quasiequilibrium convective closures tend to constrain the vertical temperature profile in convecting regions. This can be used to generate analytical solutions for the large-scale flow under certain approximations. A tropical atmospheric model of intermediate complexity is constructed by using the analytical solutions as the first basis function in a Galerkin representation of vertical structure. This retains much of the simplicity of the analytical solutions, while retaining full nonlinearity, vertical momentum transport, departures from QE, and a transition between convective and nonconvective zones based on convective available potential energy. The atmospheric model is coupled to a one-layer land surface model with interactive soil moisture and simulates its own tropical climatology. In the QTCM version presented here, the vertical structure of temperature variations is truncated to a single profile associated with deep convection. Though designed to be accurate in and near regions dominated by deep convection, the model simulates the tropical and subtropical climatology reasonably well, and even has a qualitative representation of midlatitude storm tracks. The model is computationally economical, since part of the solution has been carried out analytically, but the main advantage is relative simplicity of analysis under certain conditions. The formulation suggests a slightly different way of looking at the tropical atmosphere than has been traditional in tropical meteorology. While convective scales are unstable, the large-scale motions evolve with a positive effective stratification that takes into account the partial cancellation of adiabatic cooling by diabatic heating. A consistent treatment of the moist static energy budget aids the analysis of radiative and surface heat flux effects. This is particularly important over land regions where the zero net surface flux links land surface anomalies. The resulting simplification highlights the role of top-of-the-atmosphere fluxes including cloud feedbacks, and it illustrates the usefulness of this approach for analysis of convective regions. Reductions of the model for theoretical work or diagnostics are outlined.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Climate–Carbon Cycle Feedback Analysis: Results from the C4MIP Model Intercomparison
Pierre Friedlingstein,Peter M. Cox,Richard Betts,Laurent Bopp,W. von Bloh,Victor Brovkin,Patricia Cadule,Scott C. Doney,Michael Eby,Inez Fung,Govindasamy Bala,Jasmin John,Chris D. Jones,Fortunat Joos,Tomomichi Kato,Michio Kawamiya,Wolfgang Knorr,Keith Lindsay,H. D. Matthews,H. D. Matthews,Thomas Raddatz,Peter Rayner,Christian Reick,Erich Roeckner,K.-G. Schnitzler,Reiner Schnur,K. M. Strassmann,Andrew J. Weaver,Chisato Yoshikawa,Ning Zeng +29 more
TL;DR: In this article, eleven coupled climate-carbon cycle models were used to study the coupling between climate change and the carbon cycle. But, there was still a large uncertainty on the magnitude of these sensitivities.
Book ChapterDOI
Clouds and Aerosols
Olivier Boucher,David A. Randall,Paulo Artaxo,Christopher S. Bretherton,Graham Feingold,Piers M. Forster,Veli-Matti Kerminen,Yutaka Kondo,Hong Liao,Ulrike Lohmann,Philip J. Rasch,Sathianeson Satheesh,Steven C. Sherwood,Bjorn Stevens,Xiaoye Zhang +14 more
Book
Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics: Fundamentals and Large-Scale Circulation
TL;DR: A comprehensive unified treatment of atmospheric and oceanic fluid dynamics is provided in this paper, including rotation and stratification, vorticity, scaling and approximations, and wave-mean flow interactions and turbulence.
Journal ArticleDOI
Convectively-coupled equatorial waves
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used convectively coupled equatorial waves (CCEWs) to simulate tropical rainfall variability in the equatorial beta plane of a tropical weather system, and found that CCEWs display a large degree of self-similarity over a surprisingly wide range of scales.
Journal ArticleDOI
Relationships between Water Vapor Path and Precipitation over the Tropical Oceans
TL;DR: The relationship between water vapor path W and surface precipitation rate P over tropical oceanic regions was analyzed using 4 yr of gridded daily SSM/I satellite microwave radiometer data.
References
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Book
Nonlinear Oscillations, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations of Vector Fields
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce differential equations and dynamical systems, including hyperbolic sets, Sympolic Dynamics, and Strange Attractors, and global bifurcations.
A Reflection on Nonlinear Oscillations, Dynamical Systems, and Bifurcations of Vector Fields
J. Guckenheimer,P. J. Holmes +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce differential equations and dynamical systems, including hyperbolic sets, Sympolic Dynamics, and Strange Attractors, and global bifurcations.
Journal ArticleDOI
Some simple solutions for heat-induced tropical circulation.
TL;DR: In this article, a simple analytic model is constructed to elucidate some basic features of the response of the tropical atmosphere to diabatic heating, showing that there is considerable east-west asymmetry which can be illustrated by solutions for heating concentrated in an area of finite extent.
Journal ArticleDOI
Interaction of a Cumulus Cloud Ensemble with the Large-Scale Environment, Part I
Akio Arakawa,Wayne H. Schubert +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, large-scale modification of the environment by cumulus clouds is discussed in terms of entrainment, detraining, evaporation, and subsidence, and budget equations for mass, static energy, water vapor, and liquid water are considered.
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Modeling Tropical Convergence Based on the Moist Static Energy Budget
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