Life Cycles of Moist Baroclinic Eddies

Abstract

The interaction between moisture and baroclinic eddies was examined through eddy life-cycle experiments using a global, primitive equation model. How condensation affects the structural evolution of eddies, their fluxes of heat, moisture, and momentum, and their subsequent interaction with the zonal average state was examined. Initial states corresponded to climatological winter and summer zonal average states. For most experiments the perturbation had a fundamental zonal wavenumber 7, representing an appropriate scale for transient eddies that reach substantial amplitudes in the atmosphere. Additional experiments used fundamental wavenumber 4, 10, or 14. The wave's vertical motion produced midtropospheric supersaturation whose heating further amplified the vertical motion. Consequently, the largest effects of condensation were associated with vertical transports. Compared to corresponding dry experiments, intensified vertical motions increased the maximum kinetic energy attained by the wave, but they also depleted the eddy available potential energy more rapidly, thus inducing a faster evolution of the life cycle. Even greater condensation occurred near the surface as warm, moist air moving poleward became supersaturated by heat loss into a cooler surface. However, the latent heat thus released was balanced by the heat loss into the surface and so produced no dynamical effect. The hydrological cycle induced by the wave was largely confined to the lower troposphere, but the strongest effects of condensation on eddy dynamics occurred in the upper troposphere, so the condensational heating altered only weakly the intensity of the wave-induced moisture cycle.