The Moisture Structure of ISO in Western North Pacific Revealed by AIRS

Using the humidity profiles from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) dataset, rainfall from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Global Precipitation Index (GPI), and surface winds from QuickSCAT (QSCAT) as well as SST from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for NASA's Earth Observing System (AMSR-E), we analyzed the structure of summer intraseasonal oscillation (ISO) over the western North Pacific region in 2003--2004. We find that the signal of 20--90-day oscillations in the western North Pacific originates from the equatorial Indian Ocean, and propagates eastward to Philippine Sea and then moves northwestward to South China. The AIRS humidity data reveal that the boundary-layer moisture leads the mid-troposphere moisture during the ISO propagation. The positive SST anomaly may play an important role to moistening the boundary-layer, which preconditions the ISO propagation.Therefore, the intraseasonal SST anomaly could positively feed back to the atmosphere through moistening the boundary-layer,destabilizing the troposphere, and contributing to the northwestward propagation of the ISO in western North Pacific. On the other hand, the salient feature that the boundary-layer moisture anomaly leads mid-troposphere moisture does not exist in ECMWF/TOGA analysis.