Abstract
Previous studies have shown great uncertainty in assessing the effect of vertical moist static energy (MSE) advection term to the zonal asymmetry of MSE tendency. This study addresses this issue by qualitatively assess the fractional contribution of the vertical MSE advection to the zonal asymmetric pattern of the MSE tendency field, and how its contribution depends on the choice of the analysis domain, based on both observational and numerical simulation results. It is shown that the vertical MSE advection indeed plays a critical role in generating the zonal asymmetry of MSE tendency, accounting for 60% of the total MSE tendency field in observation and even more in aqua-planet simulations. It is indicated that the underestimated contribution from vertical MSE advection by some previous studies is attributed to the unphysical selection of analysis domain for the zonal asymmetric MSE tendency pattern.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by NSFC Grants 41975108/41705059/41875069, NSF Grant AGS-1643297, NOAA Grant NA18OAR4310298, NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers (U1606405) and the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST. This is SOEST contribution number 1234, IPRC contribution number 1234, and ESMC contribution 299.
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Wang, L., Li, T. Effect of vertical moist static energy advection on MJO eastward propagation: sensitivity to analysis domain. Clim Dyn 54, 2029–2039 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-05101-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-019-05101-8