Impact of Background Conditions on the Structure and Propagation of the Boreal Summer Quasi-Biweekly Oscillation

TL;DR

This study investigates how background moisture and wind conditions influence the structure and propagation of the boreal summer quasi-biweekly oscillation, revealing regime-dependent dynamics and robust structural features across different environments.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the impact of background environmental conditions on QBWO dynamics, highlighting the transition from mean-flow-driven to eddy-driven regimes.

Findings

In dry regions, convection lags circulation by nearly a quarter cycle.

In moist regions, moisture anomalies align with circulation and extend across the QBWO gyre.

Structural features like collocated radiation and moisture anomalies remain robust across regimes.

Abstract

We examine the westward-propagating quasi-biweekly oscillation (QBWO) during boreal summer, with a focus on how background moisture and winds shape its structure and propagation. In dry regions, convection lags the circulation by nearly a quarter cycle, whereas in very moist regions it becomes nearly in-phase and extends across the QBWO gyre. As the background moistens, moisture anomalies increasingly align with the QBWO circulation. Despite differences in environmental moisture and wind conditions, several structural features remain robust: outgoing longwave radiation and moisture anomalies stay collocated, moisture and pressure-velocity anomalies remain vertically upright, and the filtered winds retain a first-baroclinic mode structure. A vorticity budget shows that, although the planetary vorticity-gradient term is important, both planetary stretching and horizontal advection are needed to explain the vorticity tendency- and their relative importance shifts with the moisture regime. In dry and moderately moist regions with easterly mean flow, mean winds primarily advect vorticity anomalies. In contrast, in very moist regions with westerly flow, anomalous winds instead advect the background vorticity. An analogous transition occurs in the moisture budget: in dry and moderately moist environments, zonal mean flow advection dominates, but in very moist regions, strong background moisture gradients allow eddy advection of the mean moisture field to become the leading term. In the moist regime, vertical advection, precipitation, and evaporation also contribute substantially to the moisture tendency. Overall, the QBWO behaves like a mean-flow-driven linear mode in dry and moderately moist regions with easterly background winds, but shifts toward a regime dominated by eddy advection of background vorticity and moisture in very moist regions characterized by westerly flow.