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Earth and Environmental Science	100%

Selected Abstracts

The influence of an upper-level frontal zone on the Mack Lake Wildfire environment

METEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 2 2007
Tarisa Zimet
Abstract Meteorological assessment of wildland fire danger has traditionally involved the identification of several synoptic weather types empirically determined to influence wildfire spread. Specifically, in the Great Lakes Region, high wildfire danger is often witnessed in association with northwesterly synoptic-scale flow aloft. Such synoptic-scale flow is regularly associated with the development of upper-level frontal zones also known as upper-level jet/front systems, which are often characterised by intrusions of stratospheric air into the troposphere. The notion that upper-frontal development can play an important role in promoting wildfire spread is advanced through interrogation of the output from a fine-scale numerical simulation of a documented explosive wildfire case; the Mack Lake Fire of May 1980. The Mack Lake case was characterised by a developing upper-level front embedded within a shortwave trough in the vicinity of the fire location. The upper-level front originated in northwesterly flow in central Canada as an upper-tropospheric ridge amplified over western North America. A thermally indirect circulation at the jet exit region both contributed to the intensification of the front and was associated with a maximum in quasi-geostrophic descent at mid-levels upstream of the fire region. The subsidence ushered dry air from the middle and upper-troposphere downward along sloping isentropes adiabatically warming and drying it along the way. A well-developed dry air intrusion associated with the operation of these processes extended to nearly the 750 hPa level far downstream from the actual upper-frontal zone supplying the fire environment with dry air that originated in the upper-troposphere/lower stratosphere. The organised subsidence was also responsible for downward advection of high momentum air from within the frontal zone into the fire environment, further influencing the wildfire spread. We conclude that upper-frontal processes, characteristic of northwesterly synoptic-scale flow, are likely a contributing factor to the prevalence of wildfire spread under such synoptic-scale conditions. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society [source]

Multi-sensor synthesis of the mesoscale structure of a cold-air comma cloud system

METEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 2 2002
K A Browning
A multiscale study of a cold-air comma cloud that produced an area of heavy rain and locally severe weather has been undertaken by synthesising data from a research microwave Doppler radar and VHF and UHF Doppler wind profilers, along with routinely available radar-network, satellite, in situ and mesoscale-model data. The rain area was generated in the exit region of an upper-level jet characterised by laminated velocity perturbations. Some of the perturbations were attributable to inertia-gravity wave activity. The rain area itself is shown to have been composed of a well-organised set of mesoscale rainbands each being due to a mixture of upright and slantwise convection. The existence of the multiple rainbands may have been related to the multi-layered atmospheric structure upwind. Each of the rainbands had cold-frontal and warm-frontal portions, so as to form a series of mini warm sectors stacked along the axis of the comma cloud at roughly 70 km intervals. The multiple rainbands were accompanied by multiple fingers of overrunning low-,w air from part of a dry intrusion originating from just below a major tropopause fold. The fold contained an intense potential-vorticity maximum which appeared to be the focus of the overall system. The operational mesoscale version of the Met. Office's Unified Model, with its 12 km grid, is shown to have resolved many but not all of the key features of the rainbands. It is suggested that further improvements in very-short-range forecasting of important local detail could be achieved by further increasing its resolution and assimilating more mesoscale observational data. Copyright © 2002 Royal Meteorological Society [source]

Dynamics of jet streaks in a stratified quasi-geostrophic atmosphere: Steady-state representations

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 600 2004
Philip Cunningham
Abstract The structure and dynamics of jet streaks in the extratropical upper troposphere are examined in the context of a continuously stratified quasi-geostrophic (QG) framework. It is hypothesized that jet streaks may result from the superposition of monopolar or dipolar vortices of mesoscale dimensions with the enhanced potential-vorticity gradients constituting the tropopause. Based on this hypothesis, steady-state monopolar and dipolar vortices in a uniform zonal background flow on an f -plane are investigated for their applicability as idealized dynamical representations of jet streaks. The representations of jet streaks satisfy the nonlinear governing equations of the continuously stratified QG framework: the monopolar vortex is specified in terms of axisymmetric distributions of QG potential vorticity in the interior of the domain and perturbation potential temperature on upper (tropopause) and lower (surface) boundaries, whereas the dipolar vortex is adapted from a closed-form analytical solution for the geostrophic stream function. Through the incorporation of vertical structure and divergent circulations, these representations of jet streaks extend those presented previously by the authors using a non-divergent barotropic model. It is shown that these vortex representations display characteristic signatures similar to those observed in atmospheric jet streaks. In particular, both the monopole and the dipole exhibit an ageostrophic wind directed towards lower geopotential height in the entrance region of the streak and towards higher geopotential height in the exit region. For the monopole, this ageostrophic wind is entirely rotational and there is no vertical motion. For the dipole, the rotational part of the ageostrophic wind dominates the divergent part; the latter is associated with a four-cell pattern of vertical velocity similar to that described in conceptual models of straight jet streaks. For both the monopole and the dipole, the jet streak is induced by the vortex structure such that the wind speed maximum translates at the same speed as the individual vortices; this translation speed is slower than the maximum wind speed in the core of the speed maximum, consistent with observations of jet streaks. It is proposed that the above representations provide a formal theoretical foundation for the conceptual models of jet streaks prevalent in the literature; these conceptual models typically are based on heuristic kinematic or parcel arguments and not on consistent solutions to a physically plausible set of equations. The representations also provide a foundation upon which to explore the unsteady behaviour of jet streaks in terms of the superposition of monopolar and dipolar vortices with non-uniform zonal background flows. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society. [source]

Wavelet analysis and the governing dynamics of a large-amplitude mesoscale gravity-wave event along the East Coast of the United States

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY, Issue 577 2001
Fuqing Zhang
Abstract Detailed diagnostic analyses are performed upon a mesoscale numerical simulation of a well-observed gravity-wave event that occurred on 4 January 1994 along the East Coast of the United States. The value of using wavelet analysis to investigate the evolving gravity-wave structure and of using potential vorticity (PV) inversion to study the nature of the flow imbalance in the wave generation region is demonstrated. The cross-stream Lagrangian Rossby number, the residual in the nonlinear balance equation, and the unbalanced geopotential-height field obtained from PV inversion are each evaluated for their usefulness in diagnosing the flow imbalance. All of these fields showed clear evidence of strong imbalance associated with a middle-to-upper tropospheric jet streak, and tropopause fold upstream of the large-amplitude gravity wave several hours before the wave became apparent at the surface. Analysis indicates that a train of gravity waves was continuously generated by geostrophic adjustment in the exit region of the unbalanced upper-level jet streak as it approached the inflection axis in the height field immediately downstream of the maximum imbalance associated with the tropopause fold. A split front in the middle troposphere, characterized by the advance of the dry conveyor belt above the warm front, was overtaken by one of these propagating waves. During this merger process, a resonant interaction resulted, which promoted the rapid amplification and scale contraction of both the incipient wave (nonlinear wave development) and the split front (frontogenesis). The gravity wave and front aloft became inseparable following this merger. The situation became even more complex within a few hours as the vertical motion enhanced by this front-wave interaction acted upon a saturated, potentially unstable layer to produce elevated moist convection. An analysis of the temporal changes in the vertical profile of wave energy flux suggests that moist convective downdraughts efficiently transported the wave energy from the midlevels downward beneath the warm-front surface, where the wave became ducted. However, pure ducting was not sufficient for maintaining and amplifying the waves; rather, wave-CISK (Conditional Instability of the Second Kind) was crucial. This complex sequence of nonlinear interactions produced a long-lived, large-amplitude gravity wave that created hazardous winter weather and disrupted society over a broad and highly populated area. Although gravity waves with similar appearance to this large-amplitude wave of depression occasionally have been seen in other strong cyclogenesis cases involving a jet streak ahead of the upper-level trough axis, it is unknown whether other such events share this same sequence of interactions. [source]