Person:

Kuang, Zhiming

The influence of eddy momentum fluxes on the equinoctial Hadley circulation is explored using idealized simulations on an equatorial beta plane in which the sea surface temperature (SST) distribution is fixed. By comparing simulations run in a wide-domain configuration, in which large-scale eddies are present, to simulations in which the model domain is too narrow to permit baroclinic instability, the role of large-scale eddies in determining the characteristics of the Hadley circulation is elucidated. The simulations also include an explicit representation of deep convection, allowing for an evaluation of the influence of convective momentum transport on the zonal-mean circulation.

The simulated eddy momentum fluxes are much weaker in the narrow-domain configuration than in the wide-domain case, and convective momentum transport is found to be of secondary importance. As a result, many characteristics of the narrow-domain Hadley circulation are well described by axisymmetric theory and differ from those of the wide-domain case. Nevertheless, the strength of the Hadley circulation is similar irrespective of the domain width. The sensitivity of this result to the strength of the eddy forcing is investigated using narrow-domain simulations forced by artificial sinks of zonal momentum. As the magnitude of the momentum sink increases, the Hadley circulation strengthens, but the increase is relatively modest except at very strong forcing magnitudes. The results suggest that the fixed-SST boundary condition places a strong thermodynamic constraint on the Hadley circulation strength and that one should consider the energy budget as well as the angular momentum budget in order to fully understand the influence of large-scale eddies on the zonal-mean circulation in the tropics.

A linear response function (LRF) determines the mean response of a nonlinear climate system to weak imposed forcings, and an eddy flux matrix (EFM) determines the eddy momentum and heat flux responses to mean-flow changes. Neither LRF nor EFM can be calculated from first principles owing to the lack of a complete theory for turbulent eddies. Here the LRF and EFM for an idealized dry atmosphere are computed by applying numerous localized weak forcings, one at a time, to a GCM with Held–Suarez physics and calculating the mean responses. The LRF and EFM for zonally averaged responses are then constructed using these forcings and responses through matrix inversion. Tests demonstrate that LRF and EFM are fairly accurate. Spectral analysis of the LRF shows that the most excitable dynamical mode, the neutral vector, strongly resembles the model’s annular mode. The framework described here can be employed to compute the LRF and EFM for zonally asymmetric responses and more complex GCMs. The potential applications of the LRF and EFM constructed here are (i) forcing a specified mean flow for hypothesis testing, (ii) isolating/quantifying the eddy feedbacks in complex eddy–mean flow interaction problems, and (iii) evaluating/improving more generally applicable methods currently used to construct LRFs or diagnose eddy feedbacks in comprehensive GCMs or observations. As an example for (iii), in Part II, the LRF is also computed using the fluctuation–dissipation theorem (FDT), and the previously calculated LRF is exploited to investigate why FDT performs poorly in some cases. It is shown that dimension reduction using leading EOFs, which is commonly used to construct LRFs from the FDT, can significantly degrade the accuracy owing to the nonnormality of the operator.

A linear response function (LRF) relates the mean response of a nonlinear system to weak external forcings and vice versa. Even for simple models of the general circulation, such as the dry dynamical core, the LRF cannot be calculated from first principles owing to the lack of a complete theory for eddy–mean flow feedbacks. According to the fluctuation–dissipation theorem (FDT), the LRF can be calculated using only the covariance and lag-covariance matrices of the unforced system. However, efforts in calculating the LRFs for GCMs using FDT have produced mixed results, and the reason(s) behind the poor performance of the FDT remain(s) unclear. In Part I of this study, the LRF of an idealized GCM, the dry dynamical core with Held–Suarez physics, is accurately calculated using Green’s functions. In this paper (Part II), the LRF of the same model is computed using FDT, which is found to perform poorly for some of the test cases. The accurate LRF of Part I is used with a linear stochastic equation to show that dimension reduction by projecting the data onto the leading EOFs, which is commonly used for FDT, can alone be a significant source of error. Simplified equations and examples of 2 × 2 matrices are then used to demonstrate that this error arises because of the nonnormality of the operator. These results suggest that errors caused by dimension reduction are a major, if not the main, contributor to the poor performance of the LRF calculated using FDT and that further investigations of dimension-reduction strategies with a focus on nonnormality are needed.

Precipitation-driven downdrafts are an important component of deep convective systems. They stabilize the atmosphere by injecting relatively cold and dry air into the boundary layer. They have also been invoked as responsible for balancing surface latent and sensible heat fluxes in the heat and moisture budget of tropical boundary layers. This study is focused on precipitation-driven downdrafts and basic aspects of their dynamics in a case of radiative–convective equilibrium. Using Lagrangian particle tracking, it is shown that such downdrafts have very low initial heights, with most parcels originating within 1.5 km from the surface. The tracking is also used to compute the contribution of downdrafts to the flux of moist static energy at the top of the boundary layer, and it is found that this is on the same order of magnitude as the contribution due to convective updrafts, but much smaller than that due to turbulent mixing across the boundary layer top in the environment. Furthermore, considering the mechanisms driving the downdrafts, it is shown that the work done by rain evaporation is less than half that done by condensate loading.