A momentum budget study of the semi‐annual oscillation in the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model

Abstract

The representation of the semi‐annual oscillation (SAO) in climate models shows a common easterly bias of several tens of metres per second compared to observations. These biases could be due to deficiencies in eastward tropical wave forcing, the position or strength of the climatological summertime jet or the strength/timing of the Brewer–Dobson circulation. This motivates further analysis of the momentum budget of the upper stratosphere within models and a more detailed comparison with reanalyses to determine the origin of the bias. In this study, the transformed Eulerian mean momentum equation is used to evaluate the different forcing terms that contribute to the SAO in the MERRA2 reanalysis dataset. This is then compared with the equivalent analysis using data from a climate simulation of the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM). The comparison shows that WACCM underestimates eastward forcing by both resolved and parameterised waves at equatorial latitudes when compared with MERRA2 and also has a weaker tropical upwelling above 1 hPa.