Episodic Trade Wind Regimes over the Western Pacific Warm Pool

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Abstract
The western Pacific warm pool experiences the greatest rainfall of any oceanic region on earth. While the SST is everywhere high over the warm pool, there is great spatial and temporal variability in rainfall. Sounding data from the recent TOGA COARE are used to document this variability. In particular, the vertical distributions of heating and moistening at different phases of the 30–60 day or intraseasonal oscillation are determined for different areas within the warm pool. While heating and moistening distributions near the equator over the warm pool are often similar to those observed over the western Pacific within the convectively active ITCZ, these profiles do not prevail at all times. In particular, during westerly wind bursts and suppressed, light-wind periods, heating and moistening distributions over the COARE Intensive Flux Array frequently resemble those observed in the trade wind belts. Such profiles are characterized by relatively large negative values of apparent moisture sink Q2 ... Abstract The western Pacific warm pool experiences the greatest rainfall of any oceanic region on earth. While the SST is everywhere high over the warm pool, there is great spatial and temporal variability in rainfall. Sounding data from the recent TOGA COARE are used to document this variability. In particular, the vertical distributions of heating and moistening at different phases of the 30–60 day or intraseasonal oscillation are determined for different areas within the warm pool. While heating and moistening distributions near the equator over the warm pool are often similar to those observed over the western Pacific within the convectively active ITCZ, these profiles do not prevail at all times. In particular, during westerly wind bursts and suppressed, light-wind periods, heating and moistening distributions over the COARE Intensive Flux Array frequently resemble those observed in the trade wind belts. Such profiles are characterized by relatively large negative values of apparent moisture sink Q2 ...

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