lmd_LEGACY1998_abstracts.html

1998 .

O. P. Sharma, H. Le Treut, G. Sèze, L. Fairhead, and R. Sadourny. Interannual Variations of Summer Monsoons: Sensitivity to Cloud Radiative Forcing. Journal of Climate, 11:1883-1905, August 1998. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

The sensitivity of the interannual variations of the summer monsoons to imposed cloudiness has been studied with a general circulation model using the initial conditions prepared from the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts analyses of 1 May 1987 and 1988. The cloud optical properties in this global model are calculated from prognostically computed cloud liquid water. The model successfully simulates the contrasting behavior of these two successive monsoons. However, when the optical properties of the observed clouds are specified in the model runs, the simulations show some degradation over India and its vicinity. The main cause of this degradation is the reduced land-sea temperature contrast resulting from the radiative effects of the observed clouds imposed in such simulations. It is argued that the high concentration of condensed water content of clouds over the Indian land areas will serve to limit heating of the land, thereby reducing the thermal contrast that gives rise to a weak Somali jet. A countermonsoon circulation is, therefore, simulated in the vector difference field of 850-hPa winds from the model runs with externally specified clouds. This countermonsoon circulation is associated with an equatorial heat source that is the response of the model to the radiative effects of the imposed clouds. Indeed, there are at least two clear points that can be made: 1) the cloud-SST patterns, together, affect the interannual variability; and 2) with both clouds and SST imposed, the model simulation is less sensitive to initial conditions. Additionally, the study emphasizes the importance of dynamically consistent clouds developing in response to the dynamical, thermal, and moist state of the atmosphere during model integrations.

H. Teitelbaum and R. Sadourny. The rôle of planetary waves in the formation of polar stratospheric clouds. Tellus Series A, 50:302, May 1998. [ bib | DOI | ADS link ]

Several recent works attribute the formation of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) to the occurrence of localized orographic waves. Using ECMWF analyses, we investigate the large scale stratospheric flow conditions in a number of cases where PSCs have been detected, both in the Arctic and in the Antarctic. We show that PSCs appear within strong planetary scale uplifts of isentropic surfaces. The adiabatic cooling of air parcels travelling within such planetary scale uplifts while conserving their humidity and trace constituents, seems to be the main mechanism for PSC formation. The PSC distribution would then follow a planetary structure, even though local orographic waves could still play an additional role when planetary scale conditions are met.