Potential vorticity modeling of the ITCZ and the Hadley circulation

Abstract

A simple zonally symmetric balanced model of the Hadley circulation is presented. The model is based on potential vorticity arguments and consists of a predictive equation for the potential pseudodensity and an invertibility principle to diagnose the associated balanced wind and mass field. When the theory is formulated in the potential latitude coordinate, the meridional advection is implicit in the coordinate transformation, which makes the prediction equation for potential pseudodensity analytically solvable. For convective heating patterns that simulate the ITCZ, the model produces upper and lower tropospheric potential vorticity anomalies of opposite sign. -from Authors