Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 43, Issue 19, Pages 10412-10419Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2016GL070898
Keywords
Madden-Julian Oscillation; tropical convection; climate models; convective adjustment time scale
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Climate and Large-Scale Dynamics Program [AGS-1228302]
- NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) [NA12OAR4310075, NA15OAR4310098, NA15OAR4310177]
- Office of Naval Research under project [ONRBAA12-001]
- NSF [AGS-1221013, AGS-1441916]
- NASA Modeling, Analysis and Prediction Program
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under NASA
- NOAA MAPP [NA15OAR4310098, NA13OAR431016, NA15OAR4310099]
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1441916] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Despite its pronounced impacts on weather extremes worldwide, the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) remains poorly represented in climate models. Here we present findings that point to some necessary ingredients to produce a strong MJO amplitude in a large set of model simulations from a recent model intercomparison project. While surface flux and radiative heating anomalies are considered important for amplifying the MJO, their strength per unit MJO precipitation anomaly is found to be negatively correlated to MJO amplitude across these multimodel simulations. However, model MJO amplitude is found to be closely tied to a model's convective moisture adjustment time scale, a measure of how rapidly precipitation must increase to remove excess column water vapor, or alternately the efficiency of surface precipitation generation per unit column water vapor anomaly. These findings provide critical insights into key model processes for the MJO and pinpoint a direction for improved model representation of the MJO.
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