Abstract A two-dimensional version of the Pennsylvania State University mesoscale model has been applied to Winter Monsoon Experiment data in order to simulate the diurnally occurring convection observed over the South China Sea. The domain includes a representation of part of Borneo as well as the sea so that the model can simulate the initiation of convection. Also included in the model are parameterizations of mesoscale ice phase and moisture processes and longwave and shortwave radiation with a diurnal cycle. This allows use of the model to test the relative importance of various heating mechanisms to the stratiform cloud deck, which typically occupies several hundred kilometers of the domain. Frank and Cohen's cumulus parameterization scheme is employed to represent vital unresolved vertical transports in the convective area. The major conclusions are: Ice phase processes are important in determining the level of maximum large-scale heating and vertical motion because there is a strong anvil componen...

Numerical study of convection observed during the Winter Monsoon Experiment using a mesoscale two-dimensional model [presentation]

to be done in this area. Face recognition is a problem that scarcely clamoured for attention before the computer age but, having surfaced, has involved a wide range of techniques and has attracted the attention of some fine minds (David Mumford was a Fields Medallist in 1974). This singular application of mathematical modelling to a messy applied problem of obvious utility and importance but with no unique solution is a pretty one to share with students: perhaps, returning to the source of our opening quotation, we may invert Duncan's earlier observation, 'There is an art to find the mind's construction in the face!'.

Linear and nonlinear waves, by G. B. Whitham. Pp.636. £50. 1999. ISBN 0 471 35942 4 (Wiley).

From a societal, weather, and climate perspective, precipitation intensity, duration, frequency, and phase are as much of concern as total amounts, as these factors determine the disposition of precipitation once it hits the ground and how much runs off. At the extremes of precipitation incidence are the events that give rise to floods and droughts, whose changes in occurrence and severity have an enormous impact on the environment and society. Hence, advancing understanding and the ability to model and predict the character of precipitation is vital but requires new approaches to examining data and models. Various mechanisms, storms and so forth, exist to bring about precipitation. Because the rate of precipitation, conditional on when it falls, greatly exceeds the rate of replenishment of moisture by surface evaporation, most precipitation comes from moisture already in the atmosphere at the time the storm begins, and transport of moisture by the storm-scale circulation into the storm is vital....

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The Changing Character of Precipitation

In the past, studies of stratosphere-troposphere exchange of mass and chemical species have mainly emphasized the synoptic- and small-scale mechanisms of exchange This review, however, includes also the global-scale aspects of exchange, such as the transport across an isentropic surface (potential temperature about 380 K) that in the tropics lies just above the tropopause, near the 100-hPa pressure level Such a surface divides the stratosphere into an “overworld” and an extratropical “lowermost stratosphere” that for transport purposes need to be sharply distinguished This approach places stratosphere-troposphere exchange in the framework of the general circulation and helps to clarify the roles of the different mechanisms involved and the interplay between large and small scales The role of waves and eddies in the extratropical overworld is emphasized There, wave-induced forces drive a kind of global-scale extratropical “fluid-dynamical suction pump,” which withdraws air upward and poleward from the tropical lower stratosphere and pushes it poleward and downward into the extratropical troposphere The resulting global-scale circulation drives the stratosphere away from radiative equilibrium conditions Wave-induced forces may be considered to exert a nonlocal control, mainly downward in the extratropics but reaching laterally into the tropics, over the transport of mass across lower stratospheric isentropic surfaces This mass transport is for many purposes a useful measure of global-scale stratosphere-troposphere exchange, especially on seasonal or longer timescales Because the strongest wave-induced forces occur in the northern hemisphere winter season, the exchange rate is also a maximum at that season The global exchange rate is not determined by details of near-tropopause phenomena such as penetrative cumulus convection or small-scale mixing associated with upper level fronts and cyclones These smaller-scale processes must be considered, however, in order to understand the finer details of exchange Moist convection appears to play an important role in the tropics in accounting for the extreme dehydration of air entering the stratosphere Stratospheric air finds its way back into the troposphere through a vast variety of irreversible eddy exchange phenomena, including tropopause folding and the formation of so-called tropical upper tropospheric troughs and consequent irreversible exchange General circulation models are able to simulate the mean global-scale mass exchange and its seasonal cycle but are not able to properly resolve the tropical dehydration process Two-dimensional (height-latitude) models commonly used for assessment of human impact on the ozone layer include representation of stratosphere-troposphere exchange that is adequate to allow reasonable simulation of photochemical processes occurring in the overworld However, for assessing changes in the lowermost stratosphere, the strong longitudinal asymmetries in stratosphere-troposphere exchange render current two-dimensional models inadequate Either current transport parameterizations must be improved, or else, more likely, such changes can be adequately assessed only by three-dimensional models

Stratosphere‐troposphere exchange

High-resolution information on climatic conditions is essential to many applications in environmental and ecological sciences. Here we present the CHELSA (Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas) data of downscaled model output temperature and precipitation estimates of the ERA-Interim climatic reanalysis to a high resolution of 30 arc sec. The temperature algorithm is based on statistical downscaling of atmospheric temperatures. The precipitation algorithm incorporates orographic predictors including wind fields, valley exposition, and boundary layer height, with a subsequent bias correction. The resulting data consist of a monthly temperature and precipitation climatology for the years 1979–2013. We compare the data derived from the CHELSA algorithm with other standard gridded products and station data from the Global Historical Climate Network. We compare the performance of the new climatologies in species distribution modelling and show that we can increase the accuracy of species range predictions. We further show that CHELSA climatological data has a similar accuracy as other products for temperature, but that its predictions of precipitation patterns are better. Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)

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Climatologies at high resolution for the earth’s land surface areas

Because of the difficulty in making measurements under controlled conditions, most of what is known about the fluid dynamics of tornadoes comes from laboratory experiments that produce vortices with features similar to those observed in a tornado. Numerical simulation of laboratory experiments has become a valuable analytical tool owing to the greater ease of extracting data. The success of the numerical simulations has inspired better-defined numerical experiments capable of quantitatively describing the basic features of observed tornado vortices and has motivated simple fluid dynamical explanations. The present article reviews the state of knowledge concerning the fluid dynamics of tornadoes as found in laboratory and numerical analogs.

The Fluid Dynamics of Tornadoes

Report of the first prospectus development team of the U.S. Weather Research Program to The NOAA and the NSF

Numerical analysis of a Mediterranean ‘hurricane’ over south-eastern Italy: Sensitivity experiments to sea surface temperature

Although the large-scale flow was similar, important differences in mesoscale atmospheric structure made the difference between moderately intense rain in Intensive Observing Period (IOP) 2b and relatively light rain in IOP 8 in the Lago Maggiore Target Area (LMTA). This conclusion is supported here through analysis of data from, and numerical simulations of, these two cases. Analysis of the large-scale data shows that there was in both cases a moist tongue of southerly flow moving from the west to the east of the Alpine south side. Mesoscale data analysis and numerical simulations suggest that the most important difference between the two cases was the presence of a cold stable air mass in the Po Valley in IOP 8 which persisted through the period in which the large-scale moist tongue was progressing eastward and prevented the most humid air from reaching the LMTA. Another difference contributing to the greater rainfall in the LMTA in IOP 2b was the development of conditional instability (with associated convective rain) due to the effect of the Alps on the eastward passage of the moist tongue; in IOP 8 the atmosphere remained locally stable throughout the period. Copyright © 2003 Royal Meteorological Society

Orographic effects on rainfall in MAP cases IOP 2b and IOP 8

Using a primitive equation (PE) model, we revisit two canonical flows that were previously studied using a semigeostrophic equation (SG) model. In a previous paper, the authors showed that the PE and the SG models can have significantly different versions of the large-scale dynamics—here they report on the implications of this difference for frontogenesis. The program for the study of frontogenesis developed by B. J. Hoskins and collaborators is followed to show how, in the PE version of the canonical cases, the surface warm front develops before the cold front, and why the upper-level front is a long, nearly continuous feature going from ridge to trough. The frontogenesis experienced by an air parcel is computed following the parcel to illustrate better the mechanisms involved. As the present calculations are carried out longer than most previous ones, the relation of the upper frontogenesis to the formation of the upper-level “cutoff” cyclone is also examined. Trajectory and three-dimensional g...

Richard Rotunno

Papers

The Fluid Dynamics of Tornadoes

Report of the first prospectus development team of the U.S. Weather Research Program to The NOAA and the NSF

Numerical analysis of a Mediterranean ‘hurricane’ over south-eastern Italy: Sensitivity experiments to sea surface temperature

Orographic effects on rainfall in MAP cases IOP 2b and IOP 8

An Analysis of Frontogenesis in Numerical Simulations of Baroclinic Waves