Deep Tropical Convection contribution to climate change

Dumping Waste Heat into the Surface Layers of the Ocean

Deep Tropical Convection/Atmospheric Rivers

Effects:  Main driving mechanism for tropical large-scale atmospheric circulation  Cloud formation from DTC influences the Earth’s radiation budget  Vertical redistribution of water vapor produces the water vapor feedback loop for global warming  SST increases likely result in more vigorous DTC activity thus influencing the above – but the data for this is somewhat ambiguous

Relevant Data Difference between black and blue determines DTC activity – sharp spike in 1997 is due to strong El Nino event – data indicates that since 2000, the gap is, on average larger than in prior decades Catastrophic Level

Ocean Atmosphere Coupled System Major Unknown: Role of Deep Sea Transport – is the rate changing?

A Recently Discovered Coupled Event Large Scale disturbances in the equatorial ocean waters can persist and spatially transmit over the period of 1-2 months. The physics behind this remains mysterious.

Computational Research at UO Mapping SST and structural changes in DTC into predictions Can do this now because of a unique UO resource in terms of computational power. Recently ran 100 days simulation (about 2 weeks of real time) at 20 minutes of time resolution (this is a world record) that produced 7200 data files of combined storage 1.8 TB – but this is now easily handled.

Video