examining the relationship between precipitation and toa net radiation
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Examining the Relationship Between Precipitation and TOA Net Radiation. Kim Chamales MPO 524 Final Project Thursday, May 2nd, 2013. My Research. Examining the effects of external forcing on precipitation in the tropical Atlantic - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Examining the Relationship Between Precipitation and TOA Net Radiation
Kim Chamales
MPO 524 Final Project
Thursday, May 2nd, 2013
My Research
• Examining the effects of external forcing on precipitation in the tropical Atlantic
• Looking at the relationship between precipitation and TOA net radiation in two simulations with varying precessional forcing
• Examining changes in tropical Atlantic precipitation – so changes in monsoons and ITCZ
My Data
• GFDL-CM2.1 (fully coupled)• Two simulations representing both
extremes of precessional forcing• Climatological monthly averages from
20 years of the equilibrium climate• Over entire globe: 144x90x12
Precessional Forcing
1. Winter Solstice (WSOL): NH winter solstice closest to the sun
2. Summer Solstice (SSOL): NH summer solstice closest to the sun
JJA JJADJF DJF
Precipitation Difference: WSOL – SSOL
Earth is closer to the sun Earth is farther from the sun
Why use this analysis?• Can’t think of monsoons as land and sea
breezes being driven by surface temperature
change in TOA net radiation
surface energy storage
atmos energy flux div
ocean energy flux div
Land and atmospheric energy storage are very small so they are neglected.
Merlis et al. (2012b), Equations 5 & 6
200 300 0 100
Summary
• Examining spatial and temporal relationship between precipitation and TOA net radiation
• Although it gives some useful information about the relationship, the variability between the two in the tropics is very large
Thank You!
Extra Slides
The downfall of using climatological averages…
• Can’t do a lot of the analyses we learned in class because we don’t have a time series!
• However, the relationships that exist in the data should still exist – we have just averaged out a lot of the variability
• Can still use certain analyses to gather useful information