Rotational Flow Dominates Abrupt Seasonal Change in Zonally Asymmetric Tropical Meridional Circulation

Abstract: The seasonality of the tropical meridional circulation evolves differently across different regions, governs the onset and retreat of monsoons and migration of tropical precipitation, thereby influencing agricultural productivity and disaster preparedness in the tropics and subtropics. By defining a pseudo meridional overturning streamfunction ({\Psi}pseudo) and defining a new vector-type, dual-component index (ASCI), we diagnose zonally asymmetric abrupt seasonal change (ASC) of tropical meridional circulation. {\Psi}pseudo converges to traditional, meridional overturning streamfunction ({\Psi}m) after being averaged over a zonal circle around any latitude. By applying the Helmholtz decomposition to horizontal velocity fields so as to decompose {\Psi}pseudo into rotational and divergent components, we quantitatively compare the contributions of horizontally rotational and divergent flows to the abrupt seasonal change. We find that the zonal sectors associated with strong deep convection exhibit the most pronounced ASC of tropical meridional circulation, and all of subregions exhibiting ASC contain landmass with low heat inertia. Particularly, in contrast to the case of zonally symmetric Hadley cell, rotational flow, rather than the thermal-direct divergent flow, dominates the zonally asymmetric ASC in the tropics, although the divergent flow also contributes to the ASC over the zonal sectors associated with deep convection. We suggest that the interplay between tropical Rossby-type eddies with extratropical eddies and tropical circulation is essential to the zonally asymmetric ASC of tropical Hadley circulation.