The Tropical UTLS JAPE Bubble and its Role Driving Extratropical Weather

Abstract:

Latent heating by tropical weather systems produces vertical mass fluxes of high potential temperature that fill upper isentropic layers with mass. This produces an expanded isentropic layer in the tropical Upper troposphere – Lower Stratosphere (UTLS) of elevated potential energy. Because this elevated potential energy is converted to kinetic energy if it flows poleward, we call it JAPE (Jet Available Potential Energy). This conversion effectively prevents wholesale movement into the extratropics, an effect of inertial stability due to the Earth’s rotation. As a result, the JAPE takes the form of a potential energy bubble spanning heights between 10 km and 18 km and meridionally between 30N and 30S on average with occasional poleward plumes reaching up to 50 degrees latitude. The JAPE bubble is bounded on its poleward edge by the subtropical jet (STJ) and its upper surface by the elevated tropical tropopause.

As potential energy is continually fed into the bubble by tropical convective and tropical cyclone activity, the JAPE bubble builds mass and an increasing potential to surge that mass into the extratropics, leading to “JAPE surge” events. These events occur at weaknesses in the inertial wall of the bubble, usually related to interactions with a polar jet. These surges become energy conduits, infusing the JAPE (and reducing the bubble mass) into the extratropical Rossby wave stream via a STJ-PJ interaction. The poleward JAPE surge events are periodic and occur in 3-5 locations simultaneously around the globe, usually in the winter hemisphere.

At the oral presentation, a 36 year analysis of the behavior of the JAPE bubble will be presented, and its role in energizing the Rossby wave train will be discussed.