Comments on "The Role of the Central Asian Mountains on the Midwinter Suppression of North Pacific Storminess" - Reply
Abstract
We thank Chang and Lin for their thoughtful and constructive comments on our study (Park et al. 2010). In Park et al. (2010), we did not explicitly state that the topography-forced stationary waves are the direct cause for the reduced downstream transient eddy kinetic energy (EKE). The response of stationary waves to topography may saturate even with a relatively small mountain (Cook and Held 1992); furthermore, their magnitudes are much smaller than thermally forced stationary waves (Chang 2009; Held et al. 2002). Instead, we suggest that quasistationary waves generated by the central Asian mountains may strongly affect North Pacific storminess by changing the year-to-year variability of westerly winds over the eastern Eurasian continent. Observational analyses indicate that the midwinter suppression of North Pacific storminess does not occur every year. Some years experience stronger and more meridionally confined zonal winds over the western North Pacific, leading to stronger midwinter suppression (Harnik and Chang 2004; Nakamura and Sampe 2002).
Additional Information
© 2011 American Meteorological Society. Manuscript received 11 April 2011, in final form 9 August 2011. We thank Yohai Kaspi for reading this manuscript and providing constructive comments.Attached Files
Published - Park2011p16511J_Atmos_Sci.pdf
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- CaltechAUTHORS:20111219-131131844
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2012-01-11Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field