Investigating monsoon dynamics in CMIP6 models using a combination of novel and classic energetic frameworks

Recent decades have seen major advances in monsoon theory, shifting from the traditional “large-scale land-sea breeze” view towards the understanding that the world’s monsoons are partly local manifestations of the seasonal migration of the ITCZ. There are a handful of frameworks which explain different aspects of the monsoons through energy or momentum conservation approaches. For example, the “Energy Flux Equator” – a proxy for the tropical rainband latitude at seasonal or longer timescales – is located where the meridional column-integrated moist static energy transport is zero. While furthering our understanding of the monsoons, these frameworks have typically used a zonal-mean approach. Here we explore a recent approach using the energy flux potential which allows the study of zonal asymmetries in combination with the moist static energy budget to shine a light on regional monsoon dynamics in present-day and future CMIP6 simulations, for the Asian and West African Monsoons.