Sea surface temperature and large-scale circulation influences on tropical greenhouse effect and cloud radiative forcing
- Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique du CNRS, Paris (France)
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Greenbelt, MD (United States)
Two independent sets of meteorological reanalyses are used to investigate relationships between the tropical sea surface temperature (SST) and the large-scale vertical motion of the atmosphere for spatial and seasonal variations, as well as for El Nino/La Nina episodes of 1987-88. Supergreenhouse effect (SGE) situations are found to be linked to the occurrence of enhance large-scale rising motion associated with increasing SST. In regions where the large-scale atmospheric motion is largely decoupled from the local SST due to internal or remote forcings, the SGE occurrence is weak. On seasonal and interannual timescales, such regions are found mainly over equatorial regions of the Indian Ocean and western Pacific, especially for SSTs exceeding 29.5{degrees}C. In these regions, the activation of feedback processes that regulate the ocean temperature is thus likely to be more related to the large-scale remote processes, such as those that govern the monsoon circulations and the low-frequency variability of the atmosphere, than to the local SST change. The relationships among SST, clouds, and cloud radiative forcing inferred from satellite observations are also investigated. 57 refs., 17 figs., 2 tabs.
- OSTI ID:
- 621389
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Climate, Vol. 10, Issue 8; Other Information: PBD: Aug 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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