Search results for "Convergence zone"

VERTICAL MOTION CHANGES RELATED TO NORTH-EAST BRAZIL RAINFALL VARIABILITY: A GCM SIMULATION

1996

The atmospheric structure over north-east Brazil during anomalous rainfall years is studied in the 11 levels of the outputs of the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique atmospheric general circulation model (LMD AGCM). Seven 19-year simulations were performed using observed sea-surface temperature (SST) corresponding to the period 1970– 1988. The ensemble mean is calculated for each month of the period, leading to an ensemble-averaged simulation. The simulated March-April rainfall is in good agreement with observations. Correlations of simulated rainfall and three SST indices relative to the equatorial Pacific and northern and southern parts of the Atlantic Ocean exhibit stronger relationsh…

Simulation of extreme heat events over the Valencia coastal region: Sensitivity to initial conditions and boundary layer parameterizations

2019

The Valencia coastal region (Western Mediterranean) is especially sensitive to extreme heat events, where they are really common. However, due to its geophysical characteristics and climatic conditions, the incidence of high and extreme temperatures may still be modulated over this area by means of sea breeze circulations, defining a Sea Breeze Convergence Zone (SBCZ) due to the meet and interaction of these mesoscale conditions and Western synoptic-scale wind regimes. A proper definition of this convergence zone is of significant importance over the study area for the simulation and forecast of intense-heat meteorological events. This study analyses a week period in August 2010 over this a…

African monsoon variability during the previous interglacial maximum.

2002

Little is known about centennial- to millennial-scale climate variability during interglacial times, other than the Holocene. We here present high-resolution evidence from anoxic (unbioturbated) sediments in the eastern Mediterranean Sea that demonstrates a sustained V800-yr climate disturbance in the monsoonal latitudes during the Eemian interglacial maximum (V125 ka BP). Results imply that before and after this event, the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) penetrated sufficiently beyond the central Saharan watershed (V21n) during the summer monsoon to fuel flooding into the Mediterranean along the wider North African margin, through fossil river/wadi systems that to date have been cons…

Characterization of the interannual and intraseasonal variability of West African vegetation between 1982 and 2002 by means of NOAA AVHRR NDVI data

2007

AbstractThe interannual and intraseasonal variability of West African vegetation over the period 1982–2002 is studied using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR).The novel independent component analysis (ICA) technique is applied to extract the main modes of the interannual variability of the vegetation, among which two modes are worth describing. The first component (IC1) describes NDVI variability over the Sahel from August to October. A strong photosynthetic activity over the Sahel is related to above-normal convection and rainfall within the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) in summertime and is partly associated …

2010

Abstract. Southern Asia, extending from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, is one of the most heavily populated regions of the world. Biofuel and biomass burning play a disproportionately large role in the emissions of most key pollutant gases and aerosols there, in contrast to much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, where fossil fuel burning and industrial processes tend to dominate. This results in polluted air masses which are enriched in carbon-containing aerosols, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbons. The outflow and long-distance transport of these polluted air masses is characterized by three distinct seasonal circulation patterns: the winter monsoon, the s…

A statistical approach towards a regionalization of daily rainfall in Sri Lanka

1993

Regionalization of daily rainfall in Sri Lanka was examined using orthogonal factor analysis (OFA) based on daily rainfall data of 42 stations for a 15-year period (1971–1985). The number of potential rainy days was computed from the original data matrix and subjected to S-mode OFA. The first 10 orthogonal factors were shown as highly significant, explaining 65.1 per cent of the total variance of the whole data matrix, where the level of eigenvalues represented was > 1.0. Noticeably, the 10 orthogonal factors clearly revealed the different homogeneous daily rainfall regions in Sri Lanka (labelled as A to J), according to the orthogonal factor high loadings matrix. Delimitation of the daily …

Timing and patterns of the ENSO signal in Africa over the last 30 years: insights from normalized difference vegetation index data.

2014

Abstract A more complete picture of the timing and patterns of the ENSO signal during the seasonal cycle for the whole of Africa over the three last decades is provided using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Indeed, NDVI has a higher spatial resolution and is more frequently updated than in situ climate databases, and highlights the impact of ENSO on vegetation dynamics as a combined result of ENSO on rainfall, solar radiation, and temperature. The month-by-month NDVI–Niño-3.4 correlation patterns evolve as follows. From July to September, negative correlations are observed over the Sahel, the Gulf of Guinea coast, and regions from the northern Democratic Republic of Congo…

2018

Abstract. In situ cloud observations at mountain-top research stations regularly measure ice crystal number concentrations (ICNCs) orders of magnitudes higher than expected from measurements of ice nucleating particle (INP) concentrations. Thus, several studies suggest that mountain-top in situ cloud microphysical measurements are influenced by surface processes, e.g., blowing snow, hoar frost or riming on snow-covered trees, rocks and the snow surface. This limits the relevance of such measurements for the study of microphysical properties and processes in free-floating clouds. This study assesses the impact of surface processes on in situ cloud observations at the Sonnblick Observatory in…

A Global Climatology of Tropical Moisture Exports

2013

Abstract In a recent paper, a climatology of tropical moisture exports (TMEs) to the Northern Hemisphere (NH) was constructed on the basis of 7-day forward trajectories, started daily from the tropical lower troposphere, which were required to reach a water vapor flux of at least 100 g kg−1 m s−1 somewhere north of 35°N. It was shown that TMEs contribute significantly to regional precipitation. Here, the authors complement and extend this work by (i) using 6-hourly European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim) data from 1979 to 2010 instead of the earlier 40-yr ECMWF Re-Analysis (ERA-40), (ii) extending the climatology to the Southern Hemispher…

Definition and predictability of an OLR based West African monsoon onset

2008

The monsoon onset is documented in terms of latitudinal shift of deep convection areas within the ITCZ using an interpolated version of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) at a 5-day time-step over West Africa for the period 1979–2004. Signals in moist convection derived from OLR values lower than 180 W/m2 allow better determination of onset dates (ODs) than the use of other thresholds or of the raw values of OLR. Such ODs are defined without any time filtering or spatial averaging along the meridional plane. They are also significantly correlated with ODs based on other datasets such as the CMAP and Global Precipitation Climatology P…