Community structure of tropics emerging from spatio-temporal variations in the Intertropical Convergence Zone dynamics.

ABSTRACT: The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is a narrow tropical belt of deep convective clouds, intense precipitation, and monsoon circulations encircling the Earth. Complex interactions between the ITCZ and local geophysical dynamics result in high climate variability, making weather forecasting and prediction of extreme rainfall or drought events challenging. We unravel the complex spatio-temporal dynamics of the ITCZ and the resulting teleconnection patterns via a novel tropical climate classification achieved using complex network analysis and community detection. We reduce the high-dimensional complex ITCZ dynamics into a simple yet insightful community structure that classifies the tropics into seven regions representing distinct ITCZ dynamics. The two largest communities, encompassin

SUBMITTER: Chopra G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11489660 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature