Search results for "Advection"

Interannual variability of Greenland winter precipitation sources: Lagrangian moisture diagnostic and North Atlantic Oscillation influence

2008

[1] We present a new Lagrangian diagnostic for identifying the sources of water vapor for precipitation. Unlike previous studies, the method allows for a quantitative demarcation of evaporative moisture sources. This is achieved by taking into account the temporal sequence of evaporation into and precipitation from an air parcel during transport, as well as information on its proximity to the boundary layer. The moisture source region diagnostic was applied to trace the origin of water vapor for winter precipitation over the Greenland ice sheet for 30 selected months with pronounced positive, negative, and neutral North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, using the European Centre for Medium-…

The effects of the Southwest Indian Ocean tropical cyclones on Ethiopian drought

1998

Tropical cyclones are one of the prominent weather systems that are generated over the tropical oceans. The cyclones that develop in the Southwest Indian Ocean (SWIO) usually travel west then southwest and finally recurve to southeast, generally before reaching the East African coast. However, it is shown in this study how SWIO-tropical cyclones/depressions can indirectly affect Ethiopian weather. Using correlation and composite analyses, interannual and intraseasonal rainfall variations in Ethiopia were compared with the frequency and time of occurrence of the tropical cyclones. Years showing the consecutive occurrence of several tropical depressions over the SWIO coincide with the drought…

Large-scale Rossby wave and synoptic-scale dynamic analyses of the unusually late 2016 heatwave over Europe

2018

This paper analyses the late summer heatwave over Europe in 2016. Central, western and southwestern Europe were primarily affected by the high temperatures. Seville, Spain, for example, experienced the highest September temperature on record on 5 September 2016, reaching a maximum of 44.8°C, and temperatures in Trier, Germany reached 34.2°C on 13 September 2016. The heatwave was marked by three distinct peaks, accompanied by record‐breaking values for 500hPa geopotential heights and, to a lesser extent, 850hPa temperatures. These peaks were associated with the arrival of high‐amplitude Rossby wave packets in western Europe. The latter originated several days before the event over western No…

Sources of water vapour contributing to the Elbe flood in August 2002-A tagging study in a mesoscale model

2009

In this study we investigate the contribution of various moisture sources to the Elbe flood that occurred in Central Europe during August 2002. An 8-day simulation with the mesoscale numerical weather prediction model CHRM, including newly implemented water vapour tracers, has been performed. According to the simulation, rather than drawing moisture from one single dominant source region, water vapour from widely separated moisture sources contributed to the extreme precipitation in the most affected area, notably at distinct, subsequent periods of time, and each in significant amounts. These moisture sources include the Atlantic and Mediterranean ocean areas inside the model domain, evapot…

The Monotone Area-preserving Flux-Form Advection Algorithm: Reducing the Time-splitting Error in Two-Dimensional Flow Fields

1993

2015

Abstract. Atmospheric concentrations of nitrous acid (HONO), one of the major precursors of the hydroxyl radical (OH) in the troposphere, significantly exceed the values predicted by the assumption of a photostationary state (PSS) during daytime. Therefore, additional sources of HONO were intensively investigated in the last decades. This study presents budget calculations of HONO based on simultaneous measurements of all relevant species, including HONO and OH at two different measurement heights, i.e. 1 m above the ground and about 2 to 3 m above the canopy (24 m above the ground), conducted in a boreal forest environment. We observed mean HONO concentrations of about 6.5 × 108 molecules …

The importance of stratospheric–tropospheric transport in affecting surface ozone concentrations in the western and northern tier of the United States

2011

Stratospheric–tropospheric exchange (STE) processes contribute at both high and low-elevation monitoring sites to background ozone (O3) concentrations. This study addresses the importance of stratospheric intrusions contributing to enhanced hourly average surface O3 concentrations (i.e., ≥50 ppb) at 12 O3 monitoring stations in the western and northern tier of the US for 2006, 2007, and 2008. The Lagrangian Analysis Tool (LAGRANTO) trajectory model identified specific days when stratosphere-to-troposphere transport was optimal to elevate surface O3 levels. The coincidences between the number of days with a daily maximum hourly average O3 concentration ≥ 50 ppb and stratosphere-to-tropospher…

Static Stability in the Extratropical Tropopause Region

2003

Abstract Idealized axisymmetric anomalies of potential vorticity (PV) on a midlatitude f plane and their related response in terms of balanced wind and temperature are investigated with special focus on the static stability in the tropopause region. The PV anomalies are specified such that they can be interpreted as the result of conservative advection in the tropopause region across the gradients of a prescribed background atmosphere with piecewise constant buoyancy frequency squared N2. Related cyclones and anticyclones are treated identically except for the sign of the tropopause potential temperature anomaly. Composite profiles of N2 are computed, for which the thermal tropopause is use…

Summer Sahel-ENSO teleconnection and decadal time scale SST variations

2001

The correlation between Sahel rainfall and El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the northern summer has been varying for the last fifty years. We propose that the existence of periods of weak or strong relationship could result from an interaction with the global decadal scale sea surface temperature (SST) background. The main modes of SST variability have been extracted through a principal component analysis with Varimax rotation. The correlations between a July-September Sahel rainfall index and these SST modes have been computed on a 20-year running window between 1945 and 1993. The correlations with the interannual ENSO-SST mode are negative, not significant in the 1960s during the tr…

Monitoring of Eyjafjallajökull volcanic aerosol by the new European Skynet Radiometers (ESR) network

2012

Abstract The passage of a volcanic plume produced by the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull volcano in April 2010 was measured by the sun–sky radiometers of the new European SkyRad (ESR) network. This network consists of several European sites located in the U.K., Poland, Spain and Italy, and therefore was particularly suitable for monitoring the transport of volcanic ash generated by this particular volcano. The atmospheric aerosol characteristics at each site affected by the passage of the volcanic cloud, during and after the eruption, have been reconstructed. For the U.K. ESR sites three events were identified by the sun–sky radiometers: the first, from April 15 to April 16 2010, related to th…