Three-Dimensional Structure and Evolution of the MJO and Its Relation to the Mean Flow

Abstract

Abstract The two leading principal components of the daily 850- minus 150-hPa global velocity potential in the Interim European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim) (1979–2011) data are used as time-varying Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) indices. Regression maps and meridional cross sections based on these indices are used to document the structure and evolution of the zonal wind (u) and geopotential height (Z) anomalies in the MJO cycle. The data are daily, and they are not separated by season. At upper-tropospheric levels the MJO signature is dominated by eastward-propagating planetary wave packets consisting of equatorial Kelvin waves flanked by Rossby waves centered along 28°N/S, for which the westerly jet streams serve as waveguides. At lower-tropospheric levels the pattern more closely resembles the response to a pulsating heat source over the Maritime Continent, where the Andes block the eastward-propagating Kelvin wave pulse. The contrasting upper- and lower-tropospheric patterns are made up of the same building blocks: a deep, baroclinic modal structure with a node at the 400-hPa level, which dominates the tropical signature, and a barotropic residual field consisting mainly of extratropical wave trains oriented along great circles. The extratropical wave trains emanate from the flanking Rossby waves in the baroclinic modal structure. The strongest of them, which resembles the Pacific–North America (PNA) pattern, extracts kinetic energy from the climatological-mean flow in the jet exit region. At other longitudes the jet stream seems to act as a barrier to the poleward propagation of MJO-related wave activity.