A Middle Latitude Cause for Drought Periods Over the Tropical Western Pacific
نویسندگان
چکیده
Studies of conditions over the Tropical Western Pacific (TWP) have found instances of extremely dry air in the middle troposphere (e.g., Parsons et al. 1994; Numaguti et al. 1995; Yoneyama and Fujitani 1995; Mapes and Zuidema 1996). These dry air masses can have a zonal extent of ~1000 km and a width of several hundred kilometers. There is often a strong inversion at the base of the dry air, which can tend to inhibit deep convection. An example of a sounding from one of these dry periods is evident in Figure 1.
منابع مشابه
The perfect ocean for drought.
The 1998-2002 droughts spanning the United States, southern Europe, and Southwest Asia were linked through a common oceanic influence. Cold sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the eastern tropical Pacific and warm SSTs in the western tropical Pacific and Indian oceans were remarkably persistent during this period. Climate models show that the climate signals forced separately by these regions ac...
متن کاملThe global footprint of persistent extra-tropical drought in the instrumental era
The major North American droughts as per instrumental records are shown to be part of a larger, global pattern of low-frequency drought variability. Drought in western North America during the 1850s–1860s, 1870s, 1890s, 1930s and 1950s, is shown to coincide with the occurrence of prolonged dry spells in parts of Europe, southern South America and western Australia. Tropical land regions are mos...
متن کاملA "New" Mechanism for the Diurnal Variation of Convection over the Tropical Western Pacific Ocean
In the companion abstract in this proceedings (Parsons and Yoneyama 1998), we discussed dry intrusions and their origins. It was found that these dry intrusions over the equatorial waters actually originated in the middle latitude westerly winds. The reader is referred to that paper for discussion of the origins and for further background information on these dry intrusion events. In this paper...
متن کاملA Link between the Hiatus in Global Warming and North American Drought
Portions of western NorthAmerica have experienced prolonged drought over the last decade. This drought has occurred at the same time as the global warming hiatus—a decadal period with little increase in global mean surface temperature. Climate models and observational analyses are used to clarify the dual role of recent tropical Pacific changes in driving both the global warming hiatus and Nort...
متن کاملTropical–North Pacific Climate Linkages over the Past Four Centuries*
Analyses of instrumental data demonstrate robust linkages between decadal-scale North Pacific and tropical Indo-Pacific climatic variability. These linkages encompass common regime shifts, including the noteworthy 1976 transition in Pacific climate. However, information on Pacific decadal variability and the tropical high-latitude climate connection is limited prior to the twentieth century. He...
متن کامل