How Does the Air‐Sea Coupling Frequency Affect Convection During the MJO Passage?

摘要

The importance of air‐sea coupling in the simulation and prediction of the Madden‐Julian Oscillation (MJO) has been well established. However, it remains unclear how air‐sea coupling modulates the convection and related oceanic features on the subdaily scale. Based on a regional cloud‐permitting coupled model, we evaluated the impact of the air‐sea coupling on the convection during the convectively active phase of the MJO by varying the coupling frequency. The model successfully reproduced the atmospheric and oceanic variations observed by satellite and in situ measurements but with some quantitative biases. According to the sensitivity experiments, we found that stronger convection was mainly caused by the higher sea surface temperatures (SSTs) generated in high‐frequency coupled experiments, especially when the coupling frequency was 1?hr or shorter. A lower coupling frequency would generate the phase lags in the diurnal cycle of SST and related turbulent heat fluxes. Our analyses further demonstrated that the phase‐lagged diurnal cycle of SST suppressed deep convection through a decrease in daytime moistening in the lower troposphere. Meanwhile, in the upper ocean, the high‐frequency air‐sea coupling helped maintain the shallower mixed and isothermal layers by diurnal heating and cooling at the sea surface, which led to a higher mean SST. In contrast, the low‐frequency coupled experiments underestimated the SST and therefore convective activities. Overall, our results demonstrated that high‐frequency air‐sea coupling (1?hr or shorter) could improve the reproducibility of the intensity and temporal variation in both diurnal convection and upper ocean processes. Plain Language Summary The Madden‐Julian Oscillation (MJO) is one of the most important sources of atmospheric variability in tropical regions; however, even the modern numerical models could not well reproduce the MJO. We believe that the underestimation of air‐sea coupling may cause some parts of such biases in simulating/predicting the MJO. Therefore, our study is aimed to uncover the impact of the air‐sea coupling on convection and the related oceanic feature during the MJO. By varying the air‐sea coupling frequency, our results showed that the 1‐hr or higher‐frequency coupled experiments had better performance due to the well‐reproduced sea surface temperature, while suppressed convection was found in low‐frequency coupled experiments. In general, our study suggested that the high‐frequency air‐sea coupling could improve the reproducibility of both convection and upper ocean features during the MJO.