Foreword
A Suite of Skeleton Models for the MJO with Refined Vertical Structure
The Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) is the dominant mode of variability in the tropical atmosphere on intraseasonal timescales and planetary spatial scales. The skeleton model is a minimal dynamical model that recovers robustly the most fundamental MJO features of (I) a slow eastward speed of roughly 5 ms−1, (II) a peculiar dispersion relation with dw/dk ≈ 0, and (III) a horizontal quadrupole vortex structure. This model depicts the MJO as a neutrally-stable atmosphericwave that involves a simple...
Predicting the Cloud Patterns for the Boreal Summer Intraseasonal Oscillation Through a Low-Order Stochastic Model
We assess the predictability limits of the large-scale cloud patterns in the boreal summer intraseasonal variability (BSISO), which are measured by the infrared brightness temperature, a proxy for convective activity. A recent developed nonlinear data analysis technique, nonlinear Laplacian spectrum analysis (NLSA), is applied to the brightness temperature data, defining two spatial modes with high intermittency associated with the BSISO time series. Then a recent developed data-driven physics-constrained...
Multiscale asymptotics for the Skeleton of the Madden-Julian Oscillation and Tropical–Extratropical Interactions
Anew model is derived and analyzed for tropical–extratropical interactions involving the Madden– Julian oscillation (MJO). The model combines (i) the tropical dynamics of the MJO and equatorial baroclinic waves and (ii) the dynamics of barotropic Rossby waves with significant extratropical structure, and the combined system has a conserved energy. The method of multiscale asymptotics is applied to systematically derive a system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) for three-wave resonant interactions....
Initiation and termination of intraseasonal oscillations in nonlinear Laplacian spectral analysis-based indices
We present a statistical analysis of the initiation and termination of boreal winter and boreal summer intraseasonal oscillations (ISOs). This study uses purely convection (infrared brightness temperature) data over a 23-year time interval from 1984–2006. The indices are constructed via the nonlinear Laplacian spectral analysis (NLSA) method and display high intermittency and non-Gaussian statistics. We first define primary, terminal, and full events in the NLSA-based indices, and then examine their...
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