Evolving Perspectives on Abrupt Seasonal Changes of the General Circulation

Professor Duzheng YE (Tu-cheng YEH) was decades ahead of his time in proposing a model experiment to investigate whether abrupt seasonal changes of the general circulation can arise through circulation feedbacks alone, unrelated to underlying inhomogeneities at the lower boundary. Here, we introduce Professor YEH’s ideas during the 1950s and 1960s on the general circulation and summarize the results and suggestions of Yeh et al. (1959) on abrupt seasonal changes. We then review recent advances in understanding abrupt seasonal changes arising from model experiments like those proposed by Yeh et al. (1959). The model experiments show that circulation feedbacks can indeed give rise to abrupt seasonal transitions. In these transitions, large-scale eddies that originate in midlatitudes and interact with the zonal mean flow and meridional overturning circulations in the tropics play central roles.