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Published December 2010 | Published
Journal Article Open

Vertical Moist Thermodynamic Structure of the Madden–Julian Oscillation in Atmospheric Infrared Sounder Retrievals: An Update and a Comparison to ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis

Abstract

The large-scale vertical moist thermodynamic structure of the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) was documented using the first 2.5 yr (2002–05) of version 4 atmospheric specific humidity and temperature profiles from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS). In this study, this issue is further examined using currently available 7-yr version 5 AIRS data (2002–09) to test its dependence on the AIRS data record lengths, AIRS retrieval versions, and MJO event selection and compositing methods employed. The results indicate a strong consistency of the large-scale vertical moist thermodynamic structure of the MJO between different AIRS data record lengths (2.5 vs 7 yr), different AIRS retrieval versions (4 vs 5), and different MJO analysis methods [the extended empirical orthogonal function (EEOF) method vs the multivariate empirical orthogonal function (MEOF) method]. The large-scale vertical moist thermodynamic structures of the MJO between the AIRS retrievals and the ECMWF Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim) products are also compared. The results indicate a much better agreement of the MJO vertical structure between AIRS and ERA-Interim than with the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis, although a significant difference exists in the magnitude of moisture anomalies between ERA-Interim and AIRS. This characterization of the vertical moist thermodynamic structure of the MJO by AIRS and ERA-Interim offers a useful observation-based metric for general circulation model diagnostics.

Additional Information

© 2010 American Meteorological Society. Manuscript received 4 May 2010, in final form 7 June 2010. This research was carried out at JPL/Caltech under a contract with NASA and supported by the AIRS project at JPL and theNSF through Grant ATM-0840755 to UCLA. Comments from M. Wheeler, three anonymous reviewers, and conversations with P. Bauer, M. Goldberg, B. Kahn, E. Manning, E. Olsen, J. Susskind, J. Teixeira, and F. Vitart all helped to improve this paper.

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August 22, 2023
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