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The responses of the Hadley circulation to different meridional SST structures in the seasonal cycle
Author(s) -
Feng Juan,
Li Jianping,
Jin Feifei,
Zhao Sen,
Xie Fei
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1002/2017jd026953
Subject(s) - zonal and meridional , climatology , hadley cell , sea surface temperature , atmospheric sciences , dominance (genetics) , environmental science , general circulation model , geology , oceanography , climate change , chemistry , biochemistry , gene
The meridional structure of sea surface temperature (SST) plays an important role in determining the variations of the Hadley circulation (HC). The quantitative differences in the HC caused by the changing meridional structures of SST over seasonal cycles remain unclear. To determine the quantitative response of the HC to the meridional structure of SST during the seasonal cycle, this study decomposes the variations of the SST and HC into two components: equatorially asymmetric components (i.e., SEA for SST and HEA for HC) and equatorially symmetric components (i.e., SES for SST and HES for HC). Variations in HEA (HES) are closely associated with those in SEA (SES). In this study, five atmospheric reanalyses and two SST reanalyses are analyzed, focusing on the period of 1979–2013. The response amplitude of HEA to SEA is about four times than that of HES to SES in most of the reanalyses. This result provides a possible explanation for the dominance of the equatorially asymmetric mode over the variability of the HC during the seasonal march.