Abstract
The time mean vorticity balance in the summertime tropical upper troposphere of an atmospheric general circulation model constructed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory is examined, with particular emphasis on the detailed balance in the Tibetan anticyclone. The model produces a reasonable simulation of the large-scale features of the northern summer 200 mb flow in the tropics, without the inclusion of subgrid scale processes that strongly damp the upper tropospheric vorticity. The vorticity balance is essentially nonlinear and nearly inviscid. There is considerable cancellation between the stretching and horizontal advection of vorticity by the time mean flow in the vicinity of the Tibetan anticyclone, with much of the remainder balanced by vertical advection and twisting. Mixing by the resolved transients is not negligible in some regions, but considerably smaller than the horizontal advection overall and less well correlated with the stretching. Subgrid scale mixing (consisting only of a biharmonic horizontal diffusion) plays a negligible role in this vorticity budget.
To relate this study to linear models of the stationary flow in the tropics, the steady state barotropic voracity equation on the sphere is linearized about the GCM's July mean zonal flow at 200 mb and forced with the GCM's July mean vortex stretching. It is found that the strength of the Tibetan anticyclone can be reproduced only by including a very strong damping of vorticity in this linear model. The strong damping needed by other authors (e.g., Holton and Colton) in their linear diagnoses of the tropical upper tropospheric vorticity balance is therefore interpreted as possibly accounting for neglected nonlinearities, and not necessarily cumulus friction. Our conclusions are, however, potentially suspect, since the terms in our vorticity budget have considerable structure on the smallest scales that can be resolved by the GCM.
