The Apparent Water Vapor Sinks and Heat Sources Associated with the Intraseasonal Oscillation of the Indian Summer Monsoon

The possibility of using remote sensing retrievals to estimate apparent water vapor sinks and heat sources is explored. The apparent water vapor sinks and heat sources are estimated from a combination of remote sensing, specific humidity, and temperature from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder/Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AIRS) and wind fields from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)’s Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA). The intraseasonal oscillation (ISO) of the Indian summer monsoon is used as a test bed to evaluate the apparent water vapor sink and heat source. The ISO-related northward movement of the column-integrated apparent water vapor sink matches that of precipitation observed by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) minus the MERRA surface evaporation, although the amplitude of the variation is underestimated by 50%. The diagnosed water vapor and heat budgets associated with convective events during various phases of the ISO agree with the moisture–convection feedback mechanism. The apparent heat source moves northward coherently with the apparent water vapor sink associated with the deep convective activity, which is consistent with the northward migration of the precipitation anomaly. The horizontal advection of water vapor and dynamical warming are strong north of the convective area, causing the northward movement of the convection by the destabilization of the atmosphere. The spatial distribution of the apparent heat source anomalies associated with different phases of the ISO is consistent with that of the diabatic heating anomalies from the trained heating (TRAIN Q1) dataset. Further diagnostics of the TRAIN Q1 heating anomalies indicate that the ISO in the apparent heat source is dominated by a variation in latent heating associated with the precipitation.