An observational study of coupled cloud, radiative, and energy flux processes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations

Intraseasonal oscillations are convectively-coupled phenomena that occur in the tropics and have a significant impact on the tropospheric temperature, radiative fluxes, global climate and redistribution of energy. These events were examined using a compositing strategy applied to tropical cloud, precipitation, planetary boundary layer thermodynamic data, and radiative and energy flux processes in order to provide a comprehensive view of variations in the earth-atmosphere convective system. Once the intraseasonal events were identified using tropospheric temperature, composited time series of ice cloud hydrometeors, cloud top temperature, composited time series of ice cloud hydrometeors, cloud top temperature, and radiative and energy budget fluxes were analyzed. These processes are strongly coupled and have important temporal phase lags and are shown to agree and contrast with several previous studies including the infrared iris and strict quasi-equilibrium hypotheses.