Current atmospheric science literature strongly supports the perspective that the Madden-Julian Oscillation operates as a convectively coupled moisture or wave mode driven by interactions between tropical convection, atmospheric moisture, and large-scale equatorial wave dynamics.
The retrieved papers consistently evaluate and apply moisture-mode and coupled-wave theories to explain the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). Studies such as [1], [2], [4], and [8] explicitly treat the MJO as an equatorially coupled convective and wave system. None of the provided papers refute the coupling between tropical convection and wave dynamics; rather, they refine the specific feedback mechanisms involved.