Improvements in POAMA2 for the prediction of major climate drivers and south eastern Australian rainfall

  Available online: https://www.cawcr.gov.au/publications/

Ocean-atmosphere interactions are key processes that drive seasonal climate variability. In the global sense, the atmosphere drives the upper ocean via heat flux, fresh water flux and wind stress (Anderson 2008). But in the tropics where the ocean surface temperature (hereafter, sea surface temperature, SST) is warm enough to trigger deep atmospheric convection, the ocean exerts strong controls on the atmosphere especially at longer time scales because of its slow variations and strong thermal inertia. Consequently, the highest predictability of atmospheric climate (e.g. temperature and rainfall) on seasonal timescales is found predominantly across and directly surrounding the tropical ocean basins and in those extratropical regions of the globe that are directly influenced by atmospheric Rossby waves which are excited by variations of tropical deep convection that develop in response to variations in tropical SST (e.g. Hoskins and Schopf 2008) [...]

Collection(s) and Series:  CAWCR technical report- No. 51

Language(s): English

Tags: Observations ; Climate model ; Precipitation forecasting ; Australia Add tag