A Proposed Mechanism for the Intrusion of Dry Air into the Tropical Western Pacific Region

Abstract

Recent studies using data from the Tropical Ocean and Global Atmosphere program?s Coupled Ocean?Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE) have shown that synoptic-scale areas of extremely dry air can occur in the troposphere over the equatorial western Pacific. These layers of extremely dry air modify convective activity and the vertical profile of radiation in clear air. At the present time there is some disagreement as to the dynamic mechanism responsible for these events and a number of their characteristics are relatively unknown. In this study, the origin and characteristics of the dry air events were investigated through analysis of TOGA COARE rawinsonde data and examination of global analyses from two different forecast centers. These drying events were found to be very common and evidence was presented that their intensity was underestimated in the global analyses. These dry events were shown to most often originate in the Northern (winter) Hemisphere as troughs associated with baroclinic waves intensified and expanded equatorward, leading to a process analogous to Rossby wave breaking. In these cases, the dry air at the edge of the westerlies at upper levels was incorporated into the equatorward extension of thin NE?SW tropospheric troughs, where it subsided and was subsequently advected equatorward. If sufficient subsidence took place, the dry air continued flowing equatorward on the eastern edge of well-defined anticyclones in the lower troposphere. The dry air in one case originated in a Southern (summer) Hemisphere trough that was associated with midlatitude baroclinic waves that propagated equatorward and developed into a series of distinct disturbances along a subtropical jet. In both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere events, the subsiding dry air in the midtroposphere was injected into the fringes of the Tropics, where it was able to reach equatorial regions if it interacted with favorable meridional flow in the Tropics. Past studies have proposed that these intrusions of dry air could induce droughts in the Tropics through decreasing deep convective activity. The implication of this study is that these droughts are actually induced by midlatitude processes.