What is it about?

In a self-consistent manner for the first time, this study simplifies a model for the complicated atmospheric system until all remaining parts of the model are necessary to explain an eastward wave propagation mechanism called the compressional beta effect. The nontraditional Coriolis terms (NCTs) are necessary. The simplification allows exact wave solutions, which can be used to validate the restoration of NCTs into numerical weather and climate models. Data analysis suggests that the compressional beta effect explains ~10% of the eastward propagation of the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO).

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Why is it important?

The simplified model untangles the compressional beta effect from the complicated atmospheric system so that we can understand this effect, quantify its contribution to observed phenomena (MJO in this study), and validate more-complicated models. The validation method is timely because many numerical weather and climate model developers are restoring NCTs, and the models are thereby supposed to resolve this effect.

Perspectives

Among this paper, I like section 3 most. When I took atmospheric dynamics courses, the classical minimal models for atmospheric waves amazed me; they are arts to me. In addition to those for sound waves, inertial gravity waves, and Rossby waves, section 3 introduces a minimal model for compressional Rossby waves due to the compressional beta effect.

Hing Ong
University of California, Davis

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: The Compressional Beta Effect: Analytical Solution, Numerical Benchmark, and Data Analysis, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, October 2020, American Meteorological Society,
DOI: 10.1175/jas-d-20-0124.1.
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