MJO Propagation over the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific in CMIP5 Models: Roles of Background States

This study explores the impacts of background states on the propagation of the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) in 24 CMIP5 models using a precipitation-based MJO tracking method. The ability of the model to reproduce the MJO propagation is reflected in the occurrence frequency of individual MJO events. Moisture budget analysis suggests that the occurrence frequencies of MJO events that propagate across the Indian Ocean (IO-MJO) and western Pacific (WP-MJO) in the models are mainly related to the low-level meridional moisture advection ahead of the MJO convection center. This advection is tightly associated with the background distribution of low-level moisture. Drier biases in background low-level moisture over the entire tropical regions account for underestimated MJO occurrence frequency in the bottom-tier simulations. This study highlights the importance of reproducing the year-to-year background states for the simulations of MJO propagation in the models by further decomposing the background states into the climatology and anomaly components. The background meridional moisture gradient accounting for the IO-MJO occurrence frequency is closely related to its climatology component; however, the anomaly component regulated by El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is also important for the WP-MJO occurrence frequency. The year-to-year variations of background zonal and meridional gradients associated with ENSO account for the IO-MJO occurrence frequency tend to be offset from each other. As a result, ENSO shows no significant impact on the IO-MJO occurrence frequency. However, the MJO events are more likely to propagate across the western Pacific during El Nino years.