Spontaneous Zonal Symmetry Breaking of Tropical Rain Belt

TL;DR

This study uses idealized simulations to explore how tropical rain belts can spontaneously break zonal symmetry, revealing the conditions that favor such organization and the associated energy transport dynamics.

Contribution

It identifies key factors like SST amplitude and meridional energy forcing that lead to spontaneous zonal organization of tropical rain belts.

Findings

Zonal convective self-aggregation occurs with large SST peaks and amplitudes.

Weak meridional convergence is linked to boundary-layer stability and frictional damping.

ZCSA reorganizes meridional moist static energy transport and weakens meridional moisture contrast.

Abstract

The intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) is a central component of tropical climate, but the conditions under which a tropical rain belt remains zonally extended or becomes unstable to zonal organization are not well understood. We investigate this problem using idealized nonrotating kilometer-scale simulations forced by a prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) distribution that varies only in the meridional direction. This setup produces an ITCZ-like rain belt while allowing spontaneous zonal convective self-aggregation (ZCSA) to emerge. A parameter sweep shows that ZCSA occurs preferentially when both the peak SST and the meridional SST amplitude are large. ZCSA cases exhibit a temporary weakening of the meridional near-surface convergence. Boundary-layer momentum and thermodynamic analyses link this weakening to enhanced lower-tropospheric stability over the cool subsiding region, a shallower boundary layer, and stronger effective frictional damping of the meridional inflow. However, weak convergence alone is not sufficient for ZCSA. Aggregating cases also have a large meridional contrast in moist static energy forcing, implying a strong demand for meridional energy transport. Consistently, ZCSA reorganizes meridional moist static energy transport, including enhanced stationary eddy export from the warm region, and is accompanied by growing zonal moisture variability and weakening meridional moisture contrast. These results suggest that zonal symmetry breaking of an ITCZ-like rain belt is favored when weakened meridional inflow coincides with a large imposed meridional MSE-forcing contrast.