HR: 10:20h
AN: A52B-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Spatio-temporal Distribution of Latent Heating in the Southeast Asian Monsoon Region
AU: * Zuluaga, M D
EM: mzuluaga@gatech.edu
AF: School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology, 311 Ferst Drive EST Building, Atlanta, GA 30332, United States
AU: Hoyos, C D
EM: choyos@eas.gatech.edu
AF: School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology, 311 Ferst Drive EST Building, Atlanta, GA 30332, United States
AU: Webster, P J
EM: pjw@eas.gatech.edu
AF: School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Georgia Institute of Technology, 311 Ferst Drive EST Building, Atlanta, GA 30332, United States
AB: The Latent Heat (LH), released as a result of deep convection, plays an important role in the vertical distribution of the diabatic energy budget from the surface to the atmosphere: the motor which drives the global atmospheric circulation, including the Southeast Asian Monsoon. In particular, knowing the spatio-temporal structure of the LH during the wet monsoon season could be a key factor to understand the interaction between seasonal features of the monsoon with the summer manifestation of the intra-seasonal oscillation in the Indian Ocean basin, and hence the distribution of the precipitation. Several studies have investigated how the structure of heating in the tropics has a direct influence in the dynamical response of the atmosphere to the large-scale dynamical forcing associated with tropical precipitating systems. However, these studies assume a uniform geographically distribution of the vertical diabatic heating profiles across the Tropics. The major objective of this study is to produce and to examine three-dimensional latent heating structures over the Indian Monsoon region for the three summer seasons of 1998-2000 period using TRMM-2A12 (GPROF algorithm) and TRMM-CSH (CSH algorithm) data. A specific goal in this work is to explore the differences in the distribution of the latent heating throughout the intraseasonal cycle. This intra- seasonal cycle not only generates wet and dry spells over the South-East Asian continent but also determines the spatial distribution of the climatological JJAS rainfall in the Indian Monsoon Region. Results show spatial distribution differences between the LH profiles during the suppressed and active phases of the oscillation as well as differences in the vertical. During an active phase of the oscillation over the Indian Ocean, the released latent heat is concentrated predominantly near the equator while during the suppressed phased the heating is concentrated in the Bay of Bengal and the continental South East Asia. In the vertical, a deep warm blob aloft over the Bay of Bengal contrast with lower heating peaks over equatorial regions, related with the characteristics of the cloud systems in these regions. These differences in profiles can be used as key inputs in the forcing of general circulation models and cloud resolving models to understand the main differences in the atmospheric response to the geographic location of the heating.
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (0429, 3309)
DE: 3309 Climatology (1616, 1620, 3305, 4215, 8408)
DE: 3310 Clouds and cloud feedbacks
DE: 3360 Remote sensing
DE: 3374 Tropical meteorology
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting