Abstract
Abstract. The Maritime Continent (MC) is an exceedingly complex region from the perspective of both its meteorology and its aerosol characteristics. Convection in the MC is ubiquitous and assumes a wide variety of forms under the influence of an evolving large-scale dynamic and thermodynamic context. Understanding the interaction between convective systems and their environment, both individually and in the aggregate, requires knowledge of the dominant patterns of spatial and temporal variability. Ongoing cloud model ensemble studies require realistic perturbations to the atmospheric thermodynamic state to devise system sensitivities. Apart from modeling studies, evanescent signals in the tropical system are obscured by the underlying broad-scale meteorological variability, which if constrained could illuminate fine-scale physical processes. To this end, radiosonde observations from 2008 to 2016 are examined from three upper-air sounding sites within the MC for the purpose of exploring the dominant vertical temperature, humidity, and wind structures in the region. Principal component analysis is applied to the vertical atmospheric column to transform patterns present in radiosonde data into canonical thermodynamic and wind profiles for the MC. Both rotated and non-rotated principal components are considered, and the emerging structure functions reflect the fundamental vertical modes of short-term tropical variability. The results indicate that while there is tremendous spatial and temporal variability across the MC, the primary modes of vertical thermodynamic and wind variability in the region can be represented in a lower-dimensional subspace. In addition, the vertical structures are very similar among different sites around the region, though different structures may manifest more strongly at one location than another. The results indicate that, while different meteorology may be found in various parts of the MC at any given time, the processes themselves are remarkably consistent. The ability to represent this variability using a limited number of structure functions facilitates analysis of covariability between atmospheric structure and convective systems and also enables future systematic model-based ensemble analysis of cloud development, convection, and precipitation over the MC.
Highlights
The Maritime Continent (MC) constitutes a region in the western Pacific critical to the formation and/or evolution of many of the key drivers of tropical atmospheric variability (Neale and Slingo, 2003)
The results indicate that while there is tremendous spatial and temporal variability across the MC, the primary modes of vertical thermodynamic and wind variability in the region can be represented in a lower-dimensional subspace
The results indicate that, while different meteorology may be found in various parts of the MC at any given time, the processes themselves are remarkably consistent
Summary
The Maritime Continent (MC) constitutes a region in the western Pacific critical to the formation and/or evolution of many of the key drivers of tropical atmospheric variability (Neale and Slingo, 2003). It plays host to a broad spectrum of convective systems that interact with the environment and each other in ways that are difficult both to observe and to model It is the site of one of the most complex aerosol environments on Earth (Reid et al, 2012, 2015, 2016a, b; Atwood et al, 2013, 2017). At the heart of the challenge is the fact that short- to medium-term variability in the region is affected by processes that span a tremendous range of temporal and spatial scales (Zhang, 2014) Among these are the diurnal cycle of convection, the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO; Zhang, 2005), equatorial waves, seasonal monsoons (Misra and Li, 2014), progression of the Intertropical
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