Wang, Qing

As part of the DYNAMO Program, this proposal effort seeks to understand the MJO initiation processes over the tropical Indian Ocean using GPS dropsonde measurements to be deployed from the NOAA P-3 research aircraft. The data will be analyzed along with the other measurements from the aircraft including the Doppler radar and flight-level data in collaboration with other DYNAMO PI teams. The main objective is to examine two if the basic DYNAMO hypotheses on MJO initiation involving the interaction between environmental moisture and convection (DYNAMO hypothesis #1) and the interaction at the air-sea interface (DYNAMO hypothesis #3). DYNAMO hypothesis #2 on cloud population will be discussed in the context of #1 and #3. This proposed research also aims to better understand the coupled feedback among convective cloud systems, air-sea fluxes and boundary layer processes as well as the contribution of such feedback to MJO initiation, which has not been well addressed in previous field campaigns such as TOGA COARE.
Meteorology
National Science Foundation
NSF
2016