“…Many previous works have recognized that transient cross‐equatorial flows associated with meridional wind surges exert important lateral forcing on tropical disturbances such as westerly wind bursts, convectively coupled equatorial waves, and tropical cyclones in the broad Indian Ocean‐Pacific region. For example, northerly cold surges from the East Asian extratropics and their related cross‐equatorial flows play a role in the development of equatorial westerly wind bursts in the western Pacific [e.g., Murakami and Sumi , 1981; Love , 1985a, 1985b; Chu , 1988; Sumathipala and Murakami , 1988; Chu and Frederick , 1990; Kiladis et al , 1994; Meehl et al , 1996; Suppiah and Wu , 1998; Yu and Rienecker , 1998; Compo et al , 1999; Yu et al , 2003]. In addition, the northerly surges have effects on tropical cyclones and other near‐equatorial vortex‐type disturbances over the Maritime Continent [e.g., Love , 1985b; Chang et al , 2003, 2005].…”