The Angola low is a key feature of the southern Africa wet season atmosphere that influences precipitation across the continent. This paper uses ERA-Interim to show that the synoptic expression of the Angola low is a combination of dry heat lows and moist tropical low pressure systems. The Angola heat low and Angola tropical low composites are contrasted against similar lows observed in other continental tropical regions and found to be broadly comparable. The implications that the distinction between dry and moist events has for the interannual relationship among the Angola low, precipitation, and ENSO are examined. The tropical lows exhibit unusual semistationary behavior by lingering in the Angola region rather than traveling offshore. This behavior is proposed to be caused by an integrated sea breeze–anabatic wind that enhances (inhibits) cyclonic vorticity stretching and convection inland (near the coast). The combined effect of the heat lows and the anchored tropical lows creates the Angola low in the climatological average. By elucidating the mechanisms of the Angola low, this research improves the foundation of process-based evaluation of southern Africa present and future climate in CMIP and AMIP models.
An overturning circulation, driven by prescribed buoyancy forcing, is used to set a zonal volume transport in a reentrant channel ocean model with three isopycnal layers. The channel is designed to represent the Southern Ocean such that the forced overturning resembles the lower limb of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). The relative contributions of wind and buoyancy forcing to the zonal circulation are examined. It is found that the zonal volume transport is strongly dependent on the buoyancy forcing and that the eddy kinetic energy is primarily set by wind stress forcing. The zonal momentum budget integrated over each layer is considered in the buoyancy-forced, wind-forced, and combined forcing case. At equilibrium, sources and sinks of momentum are balanced, but the transient spinup reveals the source of momentum for the current. In the buoyancy-forced case, the forcing creates a baroclinic shear with westward flow in the lower layer, allowing topographic form stress and bottom friction to act as the initial sources of eastward momentum, with bottom friction acting over a longer time frame. In the wind-forced and combined forcing cases, the surface wind stress dominates the initial momentum budget, and the time to reach equilibration is shorter in the combined forcing simulation. These results imply that future changes in the rate of formation of Antarctic Bottom Water may alter the volume transport of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.
Projected rainfall decline in southern Africa is likely to be highly sensitive to subtleties in the local atmospheric circulation. In an effort to understand the regional circulation complexities, a novel algorithm is developed to identify the Congo air boundary (CAB) in ERA-5, a high-resolution reanalysis dataset. The CAB, a forgotten feature of the circulation, is defined in the austral spring and early summer, using surface humidity gradients and near-surface wind convergence lines, and it is found to be an indicator of the location of the southern edge of the African rain belt. A related convergence-line and dryline feature, described in this paper as the Kalahari discontinuity (KD), is also identified. It is established that either a dryline CAB or KD is present in southern Africa for over 95% of days between August and December, with arc lengths typically exceeding 10°. The seasonal and diurnal cycles of the CAB and the KD are presented, and their prevalence in station observational data is confirmed. The interannual variability of the CAB latitude and detection frequency is found to explain at least 55% of interannual spring rainfall variability in southern Africa between 15° to 25°S. Links are established with the Angola and Kalahari heat lows and tropical temperate trough events.
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