Large-scale motions of the tropics in observations and theory

Charney (1963) characterized the tropical atmosphere in terms of a superposition of large regions of nearly nondivergent circulations containing local subdomains, or 'fissures', of active convection and latent heating. Tropical wave evolution is then appropriately treated in terms of quasi-rotational waves, to the extent that the divergent contribution is small. An attempt is presently made to interpret recent tropical analyses in the aforementioned terms, suggesting extensions of the simplest quasi-rotational model capable of reconciling observations and theory. First GARP Global Experiment (FGGE) observations suggest that strongly divergent local tropical circulations are forced by latent heating and produce important direct modifications of the total wind field; after describing the extent to which the resulting field consists of divergent and rotational components in different analyses of the FGGE data, independent supporting documentation of the results in terms of heating estimates and rainfall observations are given.