Identification

Title

On the dynamics of Indian Ocean teleconnections into the Southern Hemisphere during Austral winter

Abstract

Stationary Rossby waves, forced by the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD), have an important role in Southern Hemisphere (SH) weather and climate, including promoting Australian drought and driving Antarctic sea ice variations. However, the dynamics of these teleconnections are not fully understood. During winter, the subtropical jet (STJ) should prohibit continuous propagation of a stationary Rossby wave into the SH extratropics due to the negative meridional gradient of absolute vorticity (beta*) on its poleward flank. The mechanisms that enable this teleconnection are investigated using observational and reanalysis datasets, a hierarchy of atmospheric model experiments and Rossby wave diagnostics. We conduct 90-member simulations using the Community Atmosphere Model, version 5, with an imposed local diabatic heating anomaly over the eastern Indian Ocean. We find an initial zonal propagation along the STJ waveguide, but after about 10 days, a poleward-arcing wave train appears in the extratropics that has the characteristics of the observed IOD teleconnection. Our results suggest that the Rossby wave can overcome the negative beta* barrier by (i) propagating directly poleward in the midtroposphere and thus avoiding this evanescent region in the upper troposphere, (ii) partly propagating directly through this barrier, and (iii) propagating around this barrier farther upstream to the west. A transient eddy feedback, previously postulated to be the key mechanism to allow the stationary Rossby wave to appear on the poleward side of the negative beta* region, reinforces the response but is not a requisite, which we confirm through comparison with a simplified linear model.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7zk5mfv

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

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South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2022-09-01T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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name of format

version of format

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Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact