The Madden–Julian Oscillation Simulated in the NCEP Climate Forecast System Model: The Importance of Stratiform Heating

Abstract This study investigates the capability for simulating the Madden–Julian oscillation (MJO) in a series of atmosphere–ocean coupled and uncoupled simulations using NCEP operational general circulation models. The effect of air–sea coupling on the MJO is examined by comparing long-term simulations from the coupled Climate Forecast System (CFS T62) and the atmospheric Global Forecast System (GFS T62) models. Another coupled simulation with a higher horizontal resolution model (CFS T126) is performed to investigate the impact of model horizontal resolution. Furthermore, to examine the impact on a deep convection scheme, an additional coupled T126 run (CFS T126RAS) is conducted with the relaxed Arakawa–Schubert (RAS) scheme. The most important factors for the proper simulation of the MJO are investigated from these runs. The empirical orthogonal function, lagged regression, and spectral analyses indicated that the interactive air–sea coupling greatly improved the coherence between convection, circulati...

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