How Do Energy Fluxes Link Precipitation Variability across the Tropical Weather-Climate Continuum?

在赤道附近，一条几乎永久不变的高降雨带环绕着全球。它随着季节的变化向北和向南移动，在夏季，它在陆地上成为印度等地的地球季风，提供数十亿人赖以生存的降雨。它的运动与大气能量的南北输送密切相关。然而，由于沿雨带的行进扰动，雨带位置与南北能量输送之间的关系是复杂的。其主流理论和许多气候模型未能捕捉到这种关系。研究人员将利用观测到的温度、风、降水和湿度，首次确定不同类型的热带扰动对南北能量传输的准确贡献。将这些信息与气候模型模拟相结合，研究人员将为个体扰动类型的能量传输开发新的理论，并将这些理论整合到现有理论中。最后，研究人员将与纽约城市学院(CCNY)合作，建立三个最先进的旋转水箱平台，教授气候科学、天气和海洋学的概念，并利用这些设备为CCNY的科学推广活动做出贡献。这项工作将提高我们对热带旅行扰动(如马登-朱利安振荡)的基本理解，这些扰动已知会影响极端天气事件的可能性。它将统一在看似不同的时间和空间尺度上的工作，跨越天气-气候连续体，从短暂的小波到半永久的环全球雨带。它将查明热带降雨的可能误差来源，以及在天气和气候模型中解决这些误差的方法，有助于减少对数十亿脆弱人口所在的季风区未来变化预测的不确定性。与CCNY的合作将把核心的地球科学概念带给服务不足的K-12学生，潜在地激发他们对STEM的兴趣，并鼓励他们继续深造。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Near the equator, a nearly permanent band of high rainfall circles the globe. It moves north and south with the seasons, and in the summer over land it becomes Earth’s monsoons in places like India, providing rainfall that billions of people rely on. Its movements are closely related to north and south transports of energy by the atmosphere. Because of traveling disturbances along the rainband, however, the relationship between the rainband location and the north-south energy transports is complicated. The prevailing theory thereof and many climate models fail to capture this relationship. The investigators will use the observed temperature, wind, precipitation, and moisture to establish, for the first time, the precise contribution to north-south energy transports by the different types of tropical disturbances. Combining this information with climate model simulations, the investigators will develop new theories for the energy transports by individual disturbance types and incorporate these into existing theory. Finally, in collaboration with the City College of New York (CCNY), the investigators will build three state-of-the-art rotating tank platforms for teaching concepts in climate science, weather, and oceanography and use the devices to contribute to CCNY science outreach events.This work will improve our fundamental understanding of traveling tropical disturbances (such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation) which are known to influence the likelihood of extreme weather events. It will unify work across seemingly disparate time and spatial scales spanning the weather-climate continuum from small, short-lived waves to the semi-permanent, circum-global rainband. It will pinpoint likely sources of error in tropical rainfall and ways to address them in weather and climate models, helping to reduce uncertainties in projections of future changes in monsoon regions home to billions of vulnerable people. The collaboration with CCNY will bring core earth science concepts to underserved K-12 students, potentially stimulating interests in STEM and encouraging them to pursue college.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.