Moist shallow‐water response to tropical forcing: Initial‐value problems

Abstract

AbstractThe response of a spherical moist shallow‐water system to tropical imbalances in the presence of inhomogeneous saturation fields is examined. While the initial moist response is similar to the dry reference run, albeit with a reduced equivalent depth, the long‐time solution depends quite strikingly on the nature of the saturation field. For a saturation field that depends only on latitude, specifically one with a peak at the Equator and which falls off meridionally in both hemispheres, height imbalances adjust to large‐scale, low‐frequency westward‐propagating modes. When the background saturation environment is also allowed to vary with longitude, in addition to a westward quadrupole, there is a distinct eastward‐propagating response at long times. The nature of this eastward‐propagating mode is well described by moist potential vorticity conservation and it consists of wave packets that arc out to the midlatitudes and return to the Tropics, and are predominantly rotational in character. In all the moist cases, initially formed Kelvin waves decay, and this appears to be tied to the mostly off‐equatorial organization of moisture anomalies by rotational modes. Many of these basic features carry over to the response in the presence of realistic saturation fields derived from reanalysis‐based precipitable water. Considering an imbalance in the equatorial Indian Ocean in the boreal summer, the long‐time eastward response is restricted to the Northern Hemisphere and takes the form of a wave train that passes over the Indian landmass into the Subtropics, reaching across the Pacific to North America. In the boreal winter, the eastward mode consists of a subtropically confined rotational quadrupole along with the midlatitudinal disturbances. Thus, in addition to circumnavigating westward Rossby waves, slow eastward‐propagating modes appear to be a robust feature of the shallow‐water system with interactive moisture in the presence of saturation fields that vary with latitude and longitude.