Tropical Ocean-Atmosphere Interaction

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This research is aimed at understanding the mechanisms of ocean-atmosphere interaction in the tropics and the phenomena that these produce. The methods and models already developed will be applied to three main areas: 1) Contined work on interannual variability, emphasizing analytical as well as numerical approaches. 2) Initiation of work on the effects of coupled feedbacks in the climatology. Tropical climate features in coupled general circulation models (GCMs) appear to be quite sensitive to coupled feedbacks involving three-dimensional dynamical interactions. Much of the current discussion of ocean- atmosphere interaction in tropical climate centers on a one- dimensional, vertical column point of view. A complementary approach is proposed, aimed at developing understanding of the interactions which are nonlocal in the horizontal. 3) Tropcial atmosphere modeling. Current simple atmospheric models used in coupling have a number of deficiencies for this type of study. Further development of a model of complexity intermediate between these and atmospheric GCMs is proposed; in particular one for which near-analytic versions can be obtained in simplifying cases, thanks to the properties of the Betts (1986) convection scheme. The mechanisms driving both the tropical atmospheric response to surface boundary conditions and intraseasonal variability, such as the Madden- Julian oscillation, will be examined. This research is important because it is one of the studies which will help determine the feasibility of modeling the coupled ocean-atmosphere system for the purpose of predicting its variations on time scales of months to years, an issue of concern in climate variability.