Maintenance of the intertropical convergence zones and the large- scale tropical circulation on a water-covered earth

Abstract

How the surface boundary heating (sea surface temperature) and cumulus adjustment process affect the location, structure, energetics, and dynamics of the intertropical convergence zones (ITCZs) is investigated. A series of experiments is performed with a general circulation model where the lower boundary is specified to be water at a fixed sea surface temperature (SST), an aqua planet. All experiments are run using equinoctal insolation with no longitudinal variation in SST. Two different convective parameterization schemes (Kuo and moist convective adjustment) and several different zonally symmetric SST distributions are used in these experiments. -from Authors