The representation of Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves and upscale energy transfer in models with explicit and parametrized convection

TL;DR

This study compares convectively coupled equatorial waves and energy transfer in two tropical climate models, revealing that explicit convection representation significantly improves the simulation of upscale energy transfer and wave coherence.

Contribution

It provides the first quantitative diagnosis of interscale energy transfer in models with explicit and parametrized convection, highlighting the importance of explicit convection for accurate tropical wave simulation.

Findings

RAL3 shows 50% higher upscale energy transfer than GAL9.

CCEWs are more coherent and have less phase-speed variability in RAL3.

Explicit convection improves the simulation of convective coupling in CCEWs.

Abstract

Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves (CCEWs) dominate atmospheric variability on timescales of 2--30 days in the Tropics, bringing episodes of widespread heavy precipitation. This study compares the representation of CCEWs and their connection to upscale energy transfer in two Met Office Unified Model simulations of the full tropical channel with identical km-scale resolution for the DYAMOND Summer period. The principal difference between the simulations is that one parametrizes convection (GAL9), while the other (RAL3) is convection permitting. The GAL9 convection scheme acts to remove vertical instability without explicitly representing the resolved-scale circulation associated with convective plumes. We present the first quantitative diagnosis of interscale energy transfer and its relation to CCEWs. This diagnosis is important because upscale energy transfer between convection and large-scale waves may influence accurate simulation of tropical weather systems. The average upper-tropospheric upscale transfer simulated by RAL3 is approximately 50% higher than GAL9. CCEWs are more coherent in RAL3, with an average phase-speed variability 80% higher than observations, compared with 166% higher in GAL. RAL3 also simulates greater upscale energy transfer within waves than GAL9 with a stronger correlation between the interscale energy transfer and equatorial wave winds. Kelvin and Rossby waves are associated with upscale energy transfer from scales 4-8 times smaller than their wavelength, related to active deep convection within a particular sector of the wave phase. Our findings show that the explicit representation of convection has a significant impact on the simulation of upscale energy transfer, and is very likely to be a significant factor in the faithful simulation of convective coupling within CCEWs.