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Effect of the mean flow on the anomalous anticyclone over the Indo-Northwest Pacific in post-El Niño summers

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Abstract

A large-scale anomalous anticyclone (AAC) is a recurrent pattern in post-El Niño summers, extending from the tropical Northwest Pacific (NWP) to the North Indian Ocean. In boreal summer, there is a strongly confluent lower-level flow between the monsoonal westerlies and easterly trades over the Indo-Northwest Pacific. The effect of this basic state confluent flow on the AAC is investigated with energetics analysis and numerical modeling. The results show that the lower-level mean flow over the Indo-Northwest Pacific aids the AAC development. Specifically, the conversion of kinetic energy from the mean confluent flow to perturbations helps amplify easterly anomalies over the Indo-Northwest Pacific in post-El Niño summers. The enhanced easterly wind anomalies provide a positive feedback onto the AAC by inducing surface Ekman divergence to suppress convection over the NWP. Moreover, the structure of the optimal diabatic heating for the AAC pattern is determined using a method similar to the Green’s function approach. The optimal forcing features heating in the tropical Indian Ocean and cooling in the NWP. This suggests that barotropic energy conversion in the confluence zone and the El Niño-induced positive (negative) sea surface temperature anomalies over the TIO (NWP) together lead to the AAC development over the Indo-Northwest Pacific in post-El Niño summers.

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Acknowledgements

The study is jointly supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDA20060502), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41425086, 41661144016, and 41706026), U.S. National Science Foundation (1637450), and State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (project no. LTO1704).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics and Center for Monsoon System Research, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, IAP/CAS, P.O. Box 9804, Beijing, 100029, China

    Kaiming Hu & Gang Huang

  2. Joint Center for Global Change Studies (JCGCS), Beijing, 100875, China

    Kaiming Hu & Gang Huang

  3. Laboratory for Regional Oceanography and Numerical Modeling, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, 266237, China

    Gang Huang

  4. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Shang-Ping Xie

  5. College of Oceanography, Hohai University, Nanjing, China

    Shang-Min Long

  6. State Key Laboratory of Tropical Oceanography, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China

    Shang-Min Long

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  1. Kaiming Hu
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Correspondence to Kaiming Hu.

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Hu, K., Huang, G., Xie, SP. et al. Effect of the mean flow on the anomalous anticyclone over the Indo-Northwest Pacific in post-El Niño summers. Clim Dyn 53, 5725–5741 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-04893-z

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