What is it about?
Extreme deep convection is detected by direct measurements of radiance from space-based instrument and linked to changes in sea surface temperature in the tropics. A linear scaling relationship is found between the extremely cold cloud top temperature and variations in sea surface temperature.
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Why is it important?
Our finding shows that the more extreme the cloud top temperature is, the more it is sensitive to changes in sea surface temperature. This indicates that occurrence of deep convection in the tropics is sensitive to variations in sea surface temperature. The work further points out that the most sensitive area is where frequent occurrence of monsoon activity and tropical cyclones.
Perspectives
This is a first attempt to directly use radiance measurements from space to connect convection to climate variability. This avoids uncertainty introduced in retrieval algorithms. Besides, the linear scaling relationship found is quite universal for climate variations of seasonal cycle and ENSO.
Sun Wong
JPL/California Institute of Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Extreme Convection and Tropical Climate Variability: Scaling of Cold Brightness Temperatures to Sea Surface Temperature, Journal of Climate, May 2016, American Meteorological Society,
DOI: 10.1175/jcli-d-15-0214.1.
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