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An atmospheric GCM coupled to a slab ocean model is used to investigate how temperature and precipitation over South America and Africa affect the annual cycle of the Atlantic ITCZ. The main conclusion of this study is that variations in precipitation and temperature forced by the annual cycle of insolation over the continents are as important as variations in insolation over the ocean and in ocean heat transport convergence in forcing the annual march of the Atlantic ITCZ observed in the control simulation. The processes involved are as follows. The intensity of precipitation over land affects the stability of the atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic Ocean, and thus modulates the intensity of deep convection and convergence in the ITCZ. Both the imposed changes in land precipitation and the subsequent changes in the strength of the ITCZ drive surface wind anomalies, thereby changing the meridional gradient of SST in proximity of the basic-state ITCZ. Finally, atmosphere–ocean feedbacks cause the ITCZ to be displaced meridionally. Seasonal changes in surface temperature in the Sahara also have a strong influence on the position of the Atlantic ITCZ. Cold wintertime temperatures produce high surface pressure anomalies over Africa and into the tropical North Atlantic and drive stronger trade winds, which cool the North Atlantic by evaporation. The coupled interactions between the SST, the wind, and the ITCZ intensify the anomalies in the equatorial region, causing the southward displacement of the ITCZ in boreal spring.

A set of AGCM experiments is used to study the annual cycle of precipitation in the region surrounding the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The experiments are designed to reveal the relative importance of insolation over land and the (uncoupled) SST on the annual cycle of precipitation over the tropical Atlantic Ocean, Africa, and the tropical Americas. SST variations impact the position of the maritime ITCZ by forcing the hydrostatic adjustment of the atmospheric boundary layer and changes in surface pressure and low-level convergence. The condensation heating released in the ITCZ contributes substantially to the surface circulation and the maintenance of the SST-induced ITCZ anomalies. The remote influence of SST is felt in equatorial coastal areas and the Sahel. The circulation driven by condensation heating in the maritime ITCZ extends to the coastal regions, thus communicating the SST signal onshore. Conversely, the Sahel responds to variations in SST through boundary layer processes that do not involve the maritime ITCZ. The atmospheric response to changes in subtropical SST is advected inland and forces changes in sea level pressure and low-level convergence across a large part of tropical Africa. The impact of local insolation on continental precipitation can be explained by balancing net energy input at the top of the atmospheric column with the export of energy by the divergent circulation that accompanies convection. Increased insolation reduces the stability of the atmosphere in the main continental convection centers, but not in monsoon regions. Insolation over land impacts the intensity of the maritime ITCZ via its influence on precipitation in Africa and South America. Reduced land precipitation induces the cooling of the Atlantic upper troposphere and the enhancement of convective available potential energy in the maritime ITCZ.

The annual cycle over land can be thought of as being forced locally by the direct action of the sun and remotely by circulations forced by regions of persistent precipitation organized primarily by SST and, secondarily, by land. This study separates these two sources of annual variability in order to indicate where and when the remote effects are important. Two main sets of AGCM experiments were performed: one with fixed SST boundary conditions and seasonally varying insolation, another with fixed insolation and seasonally varying SST. For each experiment, the evolution of the annual cycle is presented as the differences from the reference month of March. The comparison of other months to March in the fixed-SST runs separates out the direct response of the land–atmosphere system to the annual insolation changes overhead. Similarly, the same comparison in the annual cycle of the fixed-insolation runs reveals the response of the land–atmosphere system to changes in SST. Over most of the domain, in...

An empirically derived linear dynamical model is constructed using the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set enhanced sea surface temperature data in the tropical Pacific during the period 1956-95. Annual variation in the Markov model is sought using various tests. A comparison of Nino-3.4 forecast skill using a seasonally varying Markov model to forecast skill in which the seasonal transition matrices are applied during opposite times of the year from which they were derived is made. As a result, it is determined that the seasonal transition matrices are probably not interchangeable, indicating that the Markov model is not annually constant. Stochastic forcing, which has been hypothesized to exhibit seasonality, is therefore not the sole source of the annual variation of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) dynamics and the phase locking of ENSO events to peak during November.

Empirical dynamical modeling (EDM) is employed to determine if ENSO forecasting skill using monthly mean SST data can be enhanced by including subsurface temperature anomaly data. The Nino 3.4 index is forecast first using an EDM constructed from the principal component time series corresponding to EOFs of SST anomaly maps of the central and eastern tropical Pacific (328N-328S, 1208E-708W) for the period 1965- 93. Cross validation is applied to minimize the artificial skill of the forecasts, which are made over the same 29-yr period. The forecasting is then repeated with the inclusion of principal components of heat content of the upper 300 m over the northern tropical Pacific (308N-08, 1208E-728W). The forecast skill using SST alone and SST plus subsurface temperature is compared for lead times ranging between 3 and 12 months. The EDM, which includes the subsurface information, forecasts with greater skill at all lead times; particularly important is the second principal component of the heat content, which appears to contribute information on the transition phase between warm and cold ENSO events. The apparent improvement by including subsurface information, although robust, does not appear to be statistically significant. However, the temporal and spatial coverage of the subsurface data is limited, so this study probably underestimates the usefulness of including subsurface temperature data in efforts to predict ENSO. Finally, cross-validated forecasts using a Markov model that includes an annual cycle are shown to be less skillful than forecasts using a seasonally invariant Markov model. The reason for this appears to be that dividing the data yields an insufficient database to derive an accurate Markov model.

The authors present a new model of the tropical surface circulation, forced by changes in sensible heat and evaporative flux anomalies that are associated with prescribed sea surface temperature anomalies. The model is similar to the Lindzen and Nigam (LN) boundary layer model, also driven by the above flux anomalies; but here, since the boundary layer is assumed well mixed and capped by an inversion, the model reduces to a twolayer, reduced-gravity system. Furthermore, the rate of exchange of mass across the boundary layer‐free atmosphere interface is dependent on the moisture budget in the boundary layer. When moist convection is diagnosed to occur, detrainment operates on the timescale associated with the life cycle of deep convection, approximately eight hours. Otherwise, the detrainment is assumed to be associated with the mixing out of the stable tropical boundary layer, which has a timescale of about one day. The model provides a diagnostic estimate of the anomalies in precipitation. However, it is assumed that the latent heat is released above the boundary layer, and it drives a circulation that does not impact the boundary layer. The authors discuss the derivations of the Gill‐Zebiak (GZ) and Lindzen‐Nigam models and highlight some apparent inconsistencies between their derivation and the values of several of the parameters that are required for these models to achieve realistic solutions for the circulations. Then, the new reduced-gravity boundary model equations are rewritten in the form of the GZ and LN models. Using realistic values for the parameters in the new model geometry, it is shown that the constants combine in the rewritten equations to produce the physically doubtful constants in the GZ and LN models, hence, the reason for the apparent success of these models.

Four different datasets of monthly mean new-equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature for 1982–83 are compared, and the space-time regions for which there was consensus that cooling or warming took place, are determined. There was consensus that warming took place east of the date line, averaged over the period July-December 1982, and that the warming progressed eastward from the central Pacific. There was also consensus that weak cooling took place in April 1983, and that substantial cooling occurred in June-July 1983, generally over the central and eastern Pacific. However, the analyses tend to agree on the sign of SST change only in periods of cooling or warming in excess of 1°C/month; quantitative agreement at the level of 0.5°C/month or better is almost never found. SST changes in five ocean-circulation model hindcasts of the 1982–83 period (differing only in that each used a different analyzed monthly mean surface wind stress field to drive the ocean), are compared with the observations an...