Impact of MJO on the diurnal cycle of rainfall over the western Maritime Continent in the austral summer

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) on the diurnal cycle of rainfall over the western Maritime Continent during the austral summer. For this purpose, cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function analysis is applied to the tropical rainfall measuring mission rain rate and the Japanese Reanalysis-25 data for the period 1998–2008. The real-time multivariate MJO index by Wheeler and Hendon (Mon Wea Rev 132:1917–1932, 2004) is adopted to define the intensity and the phase of MJO. It is demonstrated that the hourly maximum rain rate over the domain tends to increase when convectively active phase of MJO approaches the Maritime Continent. In contrast, the hourly maximum rain rate tends to decrease when convectively suppressed phase of MJO resides over the region. The changes in the rain rate due to MJO differ over the ocean and the land. This difference is the greatest when the MJO is in the mature stage. Throughout the day during this stage, terrestrial rain rates show minimum values while diurnally varying oceanic rain rates record maximum values. Thus, precipitation becomes more intense in the morning over the Java Sea and is weakened in the evening over Borneo and Sumatra during the mature stage of MJO. During the decaying stage of MJO over the Maritime Continent, the diurnal cycle of precipitation weakens significantly over the ocean but only weakly over land. Analyses suggest that the anomalous lower level winds accompanied by MJO interact with the monsoonal flow over the Maritime Continent. Westerlies induced by MJO convection in the mature stage are superimposed on the monsoonal westerlies over the equator and increase wind speed mainly over the Java Sea due to the blocking effect of orography. Mountainous islands induce flow bifurcation, causing near-surface winds to converge mainly over the oceanic channels between two islands. As a result, heat flux release from the ocean to the atmosphere is enhanced by the increased surface wind resulting in instability as described in the wind-induced surface heat exchange mechanism. This may contribute to heavy rainfall over the Java Sea in the morning during the mature stage. On the other hand, convergence and vertical velocity over the islands, which play important roles in inducing nighttime rainfall, tend to be weak in the evening during the mature stage of MJO. Strong westerlies arising from MJO and the seasonal flow during the mature stage tend to interrupt convergence over islands. This interruption of convergence by MJO gives rise to decreased rain rates over the land regions.