Mechanisms of Meridional Teleconnection Observed between a Summer Monsoon System and a Subtropical Anticyclone. Part II: A Global Survey

Abstract

A global survey is conducted for atmospheric anomaly patterns of meridional teleconnection over the summer hemisphere associated with anomalous tropical convection. The patterns may be akin to the Pacific?Japan (PJ) teleconnection pattern analyzed in detail in the companion paper. From the survey, meridional teleconnections are identified over five regions, namely, the western North Pacific and Central/North America in boreal summer, as well as the western South Indian Ocean, central South Pacific, and western South Atlantic in austral summer. All of the patterns are observed in the western peripheries of the summertime surface subtropical anticyclones over the individual ocean basins. Although all of the patterns can convert available potential energy (APE) efficiently from the vertically sheared subtropical westerly jets, the efficiencies of barotropic energy conversion from the mean flow and diabatic APE generation differ from one pattern to another. Still, all of the patterns gain energy as the net, to maintain themselves against dissipative processes. Both the anomalous moisture convergence near the surface and the midtropospheric anomalous ascent required for the vorticity and thermal balance act to sustain the anomalous tropical convection, while the wind-evaporation feedback contributes positively only to the PJ pattern over the western North Pacific. Examination of common features and discrepancies among the five teleconnection patterns with respect to their structures and energetics reveals that climatological background features, including the largest horizontal extent of the Asian monsoon system and the North Pacific subtropical anticyclone, in addition to particularly high SST over the Pacific warm pool, render the PJ pattern an outstanding mode of variability.