David, Sorry, I am not backing off. The image you refer to is a conceptual sketch. (It's also inconsistent with what I was taught about the ITCZ.)
Check the other image on the Wikipedia page, which I am lucky indicates a July climatology; you will note that the excursion form the equator is small in most places and in the places where it is not, the structure is dramatically more complex and it's harder to identify a single latitude with a clear and sharp convective maximum. Also there's a nice animation here: http://iri.ldeo.columbia.edu/~bgordon/ITCZ.html (Unfortunately most or all of the links from that page are expired.) I don't think warm pool convection or south asian monsoon dynamics are really part of the ITCZ, though clearly they are coupled to it. I suppose it may be a matter of definition. On the whole though, the point is that the ITCZ hugs the equator with small excursions into the summer hemisphere, and self organizes into a tight maximum. This is of crucial importance in parts of Brazil and Africa. mt --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
