Wind shear

About: Wind shear is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 8023 publications have been published within this topic receiving 185373 citations.

An objective exposure correction method for average wind speeds measured at a sheltered location

Abstract: The representativity of station wind measurements can be increased by elimination of sheltering effects caused by small-scale obstacles. It is shown how correction factors for this purpose can be obtained for each wind azimuth sector from analog wind records of the station itself, by extracting maximum gust speeds during periods with strong wind. The transformation is achieved using a gust factor model (Wieringa 1973) which relates the ratio of maximum and average wind speed to measuring height, surrounding roughness and gust wavelength. The concept of ‘effective height’ is criticized. It is indicated how the actual duration of the recorded maximum gusts can be obtained from station instrumentation response specifications, and it is shown that this duration exceeds 10 seconds for the usual combination of cup anemometer and galvanometric recorder. A trial climatological application shows how omission of exposure correction may lead to exaggeration of mesoscale horizontal wind gradients.

Environmental Dynamical Control of Tropical Cyclone Intensity—An Observational Study

Abstract: The effects of two environmental dynamical factors, namely, the transitional speed and vertical wind shear, on tropical cyclone (TC) intensification, intensity, and lifetime peak intensity were analyzed based on observations in the western North Pacific during 1981–2003. In general, both the fast translation and strong vertical shear are negative to both TC intensification and the lifetime peak intensity. Both the very intense TCs and the TCs with rapid intensification rate are found only to occur in a narrow range of translational speeds between 3 and 8 m s−1, and in relatively weak vertical shear. The overwhelming majority of western North Pacific TCs reach their lifetime peak intensity just prior to recurvature where their environmental steering flow and vertical shear are both weak. The results show that few TCs intensified when they moved faster than 15 m s−1, or when their large-scale environmental vertical shear is larger than 20 m s−1. The intensification rate of TCs is found to increase ...

SMOS satellite L-band radiometer: A new capability for ocean surface remote sensing in hurricanes

Abstract: The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission currently provides multiangular L-band (1.4 GHz) brightness temperature images of the Earth. Because upwelling radiation at 1.4 GHz is significantly less affected by rain and atmospheric effects than at higher microwave frequencies, these new SMOS measurements offer unique opportunities to complement existing ocean satellite high wind observations that are often contaminated by heavy rain and clouds. To illustrate this new capability, we present SMOS data over hurricane Igor, a tropical storm that developed to a Saffir-Simpson category 4 hurricane from 11 to 19 September 2010. Thanks to its large spatial swath and frequent revisit time, SMOS observations intercepted the hurricane 9 times during this period. Without correcting for rain effects, L-band wind-induced ocean surface brightness temperatures (TB) were co-located and compared to H*Wind analysis. We find the L-band ocean emissivity dependence with wind speed appears less sensitive to roughness and foam changes than at the higher C-band microwave frequencies. The first Stokes parameter on a ∼50 km spatial scale nevertheless increases quasi-linearly with increasing surface wind speed at a rate of 0.3 K/m s−1 and 0.7 K/m s−1 below and above the hurricane-force wind speed threshold (∼32 m s−1), respectively. Surface wind speeds estimated from SMOS brightness temperature images agree well with the observed and modeled surface wind speed features. In particular, the evolution of the maximum surface wind speed and the radii of 34, 50 and 64 knots surface wind speeds are consistent with GFDL hurricane model solutions and H*Wind analyses. The SMOS sensor is thus closer to a true all-weather satellite ocean wind sensor with the capability to provide quantitative and complementary surface wind information of interest for operational Hurricane intensity forecasts.