Moisture and wave-mean flow interactions in the general circulation of Earth's atmosphere
Abstract
Baroclinic eddies play an important role in shaping the midlatitude climate and its variability. They are the dominant means by which heat, momentum, and water vapor are transported in the atmosphere, but their turbulent nature makes it challenging to grasp their aggregate effect on the mean circulation. Wave-mean flow diagnostics provide an effective means for understanding the interactions between eddies and the mean circulation. These diagnostics are derived by dynamically motivated averaging of the equations of motion, which exposes the total explicit eddy effect on the mean circulation tendency. Most of the classic formulations of these diagnostics have been limited by the fact that they do not account for the eddy flux of water vapor, which can drive circulation through latent heat released from condensation. In the first part of this thesis, a moist isentropic generalization of the Eliassen-Palm (EP) flux diagnostic is developed. Moist isentropes are often not invertible with height, which prevents the standard techniques used to derive the dry diagnostic from being applied in the moist case. This issue is resolved by using a conditional-averaging approach to define a weak coordinate transformation. The primitive equations, EP flux, and EP theorem are derived in generality for non- invertible coordinates, without assumptions of quasi-geostrophy or small wave-amplitude. It is shown that, in the reanalysis climatology, the moist EP flux is twice as strong as the dry EP flux and has a greater equatorward extent. Physically, the increase in momentum exchange is tied to an enhancement of the form drag associated with the horizontal structure of midlatitude eddies, where the poleward flow of moist air is located in regions of strong eastward pressure gradients. The second part of this thesis studies the effect of latent heating on the mean flow adjustment in idealized baroclinic life cycles. The life cycles are simulated in an idealized moist general circulation model (GCM) with no convective parameterizations and diabatic heating is due entirely to the latent heat released from large-scale condensation. A series of life cycle simulations are run varying only the initially prescribed value of the relative humidity. It is shown that increasing relative humidity acts to decrease the baroclinic shear of the adjusting zonal jet. By solving a moist elliptic equation for the Eulerian-mean circulation forced by the eddy fluxes, it is shown that the eddy moisture flux drives an indirect Eulerian circulation on the equatorward flank of the jet. This in turn increases the strength and equatorward extent of the developing surface westerlies. The reduction of baroclinicity is consistent with the earlier idea that moisture fluxes increase the EP flux and form drag associated with baroclinic eddies. The final topic of this thesis is about the extratropical internal variability of the atmosphere. The annular mode (AM) has long been considered the dominant mode of atmospheric variability driven by midlatitude storms. It describes a north-south vacillation of the eddy-driven jet on intraseasonal timescales which are considerably longer than the life cycle of typical synoptic storms. This low-frequency variability of the AM is thought to be supported by a mean-eddy feedback, in which a poleward shift of the jet is supported by a poleward shift of the baroclinic zone. However, it is shown that the atmospheric energy transport and isentropic circulation shift equatorward in the monthly AM composites. This shift is mainly the result of a poleward shift of the Ferrel cell. An alternative mean-eddy feedback mechanism based on the idea of the jet acting as a mixing barrier is proposed as an explanation for the small response of the eddy energy flux.
- Publication:
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Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016PhDT........41Y
- Keywords:
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- Atmospheric sciences;Applied mathematics