Analysis of diabatic heating during FGGE

• Main Author: Chen, T. C.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: unknown
• Published: 1984
• Subjects: 47; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19850006084

The objective is to examine the maintenance of momentum and thermal fields in the Southern Hemisphere and the diabatic heating and generation of available potential energy of the entire global atmosphere. The data generated by the Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheric Sciences First GARP Global Experiment (FGGE) III-b analysis for SOP1 and SOP2 are used for this effort. It is observed that the atmospheric circulation of the Southern Hemisphere exhibits a double jet structure (subtropical jet and polar jet) in winter and a single jet in summer during the FGGE year. The geographic distribution of standard deviation in the height field at 500 mb indicates that the major eddy activities occur in the downstream side of the polar jet and poleward side of the subtropic jet in winter. However, the major eddy activites go hand-in-hand with the jet stream in summer. The momentum transport is essentially carried out by the transient eddies in both seasons. The distribution of the temperature field is more axisymmetric in the Southern Hemisphere than in the Northern Hemisphere. The sensible heat is mainly transported poleward by transient eddies along the strong baroclinic zone where the jet streams are located. In other seasons, it is shown from the geographic distribution of the divergence of transient eddy sensible heat flux that the Antarctic continent acts as a heat sink to consume the sensible heat converged toward the polar area from the middle and low latitudes.