A Simple Tropical Atmosphere Model of Relevance to Short-Term Climate Variations

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Abstract
The tropical atmosphere model presented here is suitable for modeling both the annual cycle and short-term (monthly to decadal time scale) climate fluctuations in sole response to the thermal forcing from the underlying surface, especially the ocean surface. The present model consists of a well-mixed planetary boundary layer and a free troposphere represented by the gravest baroclinic mode. The model dynamics involves active interactions between the boundary-layer flow driven by the momentum forcing associated with sea surface temperature (SST) gradient and the free tropospheric flow stimulated by diabatic heating that is controlled by the thermal effects of SST. This process is demonstrated to be essential for modeling Pacific basinwide low-level circulations. The convective heating is parameterized by a SST-dependent conditional heating scheme based upon the proposition that the potential convective instability increases with SST in a nonlinear fashion. The present model integrates the virtue o... Abstract The tropical atmosphere model presented here is suitable for modeling both the annual cycle and short-term (monthly to decadal time scale) climate fluctuations in sole response to the thermal forcing from the underlying surface, especially the ocean surface. The present model consists of a well-mixed planetary boundary layer and a free troposphere represented by the gravest baroclinic mode. The model dynamics involves active interactions between the boundary-layer flow driven by the momentum forcing associated with sea surface temperature (SST) gradient and the free tropospheric flow stimulated by diabatic heating that is controlled by the thermal effects of SST. This process is demonstrated to be essential for modeling Pacific basinwide low-level circulations. The convective heating is parameterized by a SST-dependent conditional heating scheme based upon the proposition that the potential convective instability increases with SST in a nonlinear fashion. The present model integrates the virtue o...

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