scholarly journals Analysis of Vortex Development over Eastern Indian Ocean using Potential Vorticity

2021 ◽  
Vol 893 (1) ◽  
pp. 012003
Author(s):  
R P Damayanti ◽  
N J Trilaksono ◽  
M R Abdillah

Abstract A vortex phenomenon may have a significant influence, especially on wind circulation patterns and extreme weather in Indonesia. The formation of the vortex, initially located over the eastern part of the Indian Ocean has drawn attention due to the highest frequency of its occurrence and as the source of the vortex over the Indonesian region. Vortices generated in this region is also suspected as one of contributing factor for flooding events at Jakarta in 2002 and 2007, studying both formation and development mechanism of these vortices is essential. The evolution of vortex development is investigated to characterize the vortex motion and development pattern in the Eastern Indian Ocean region. The study was conducted for 17 years starting from 1998 to 2016 on every December-January-February (DJF) period using ECMWF (European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast) ERA-Interim Reanalysis data. The analysis of vortex evolution was conducted for each event using a composite evolution of potential vorticity anomalies in the isentropic layer. The result shows 84 vortex systems identified with three characteristic patterns of vortex movement that occurred during 295 days of the observation period. Composite analysis of potential vorticity anomalies shows that the initial formation of vortices in the Eastern Indian Ocean is related to the emergence of negative potential vorticity anomalies from the west, which subsequently forming the vortices.

Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Gozzo ◽  
Doris Palma ◽  
Maria Custodio ◽  
Jeferson Machado

Drought is a natural hazard with critical societal and economic consequences to millions of people around the world. In this paper, we present the climatology of severe drought events that occurred during the 20th century in the region of Sao Paulo, Brazil. To account for the effects of rainfall deficit and changes in temperature at a climatic timescale, we chose the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to identify severe droughts over the city of Sao Paulo, and the eastern and central-western regions of the state. Events were identified using weather station data and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) reanalysis data, in order to assess the representation of drought periods in both datasets. Results show that the reanalysis seems suitable to represent the number of events and their mean duration, severity and intensity, but the timing and characteristics of individual events are not well reproduced. The correlation between observation and reanalysis SPEI time series is low to moderate in all cases. A linear trend analysis between 1901 and 2010 shows a tendency of increasing (decreasing) severe drought events in the central and western (eastern) Sao Paulo state, according to observational data. This is in agreement with previous findings, and the reanalysis presents this same signal. The weakened trend values in the reanalysis may be associated with issues in representing precipitation in this dataset.


Author(s):  
Amrita Dey

There is hardly any dispute that the Eastern Indian Ocean like its historical past is once again emerging into a ‘cosmopolitan’ maritime arena underpinned by long stretches of peaceful exchange of commodities, energy and other maritime accessories. It has witnessed a new constellation of ‘inward-looking’ regional powers with a ‘bazaar nexus’ (for mercantile goods and energy supply) with Asian and non-Asian powers. Economically, small and middle powers of this region do share and accommodate all to draw the benefits of a highly globalised ‘closely-knit’ mercantile system. Problems relating to trade hazards—‘maritime mugging,’ ‘sea piracy,’ ‘illegal transfer of arms and ammunition, maritime terrorism, has already been addressed adequately by the collective effort of member nations under the aegis of ASEAN. This goodwill effort in the maritime zone awaits response from the cultural domain as well, which still lacks its frequency and luster of the glorious past. Although loads have been talked about, there has been little in action. The present paper is an attempt to study the community building efforts of ASEAN in connivance with emerging powers like India and China; and efforts at building up an Indian Ocean community as it existed in its past—sans feuds, sans fight—but unhindered exchange of culture and trade  


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Voigt ◽  
Andreas Dörnbrack ◽  
Martin Wirth ◽  
Silke M. Groß ◽  
Michael C. Pitts ◽  
...  

Abstract. Low planetary wave activity led to a stable vortex with exceptionally cold temperatures in the 2015/2016 Arctic winter. Extended areas with temperatures below the ice frost point Tice persisted over weeks in the Arctic stratosphere as derived from the 36-years temperature climatology of the ERA-Interim reanalysis data set of the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecast ECMWF. These extreme conditions promoted the formation of widespread polar stratospheric ice clouds (ice PSCs). The space-borne Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization CALIOP instrument onboard the CALIPSO satellite (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) continuously measured ice PSCs for about a month with maximum extensions of up to 2 × 106 km2 in the stratosphere. On 22 January 2016, the WALES (Water Vapor Lidar Experiment in Space – airborne demonstrator) lidar onboard the High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft HALO detected an ice PSC with a horizontal length of more than 1400 km. The ice PSC extended between 18 and 24 km altitude and was surrounded by nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) particles, supercooled ternary solution (STS) droplets and particle mixtures. The ice PSC occurrence in the backscatter ratio to depolarization optical space spanned by WALES observations is best matched by defining the inverse backscatter ratio of 0.3 as 1/Rice|NAT threshold between ice and NAT cloud regions. In addition, the histogram clearly shows two distinct branches in ice PSC occurrence, indicative for two ice formation pathways. In addition to ice nucleation in STSm with meteoric dust inclusions, ice nucleation on pre-existing NAT may play a role in the Arctic winter 2015/2016. This hypothesis is supported by differences in the ECMWF trajectory analysis for the two ice branches. The observation of widespread Arctic ice PSCs can advance our understanding of ice nucleation in cold polar and tropical latitudes. It further provides a new observational data base for the parameterization of ice nucleation schemes in atmospheric models.


Author(s):  
Rochelle P. Worsnop ◽  
Michael Scheuerer ◽  
Francesca Di Giuseppe ◽  
Christopher Barnard ◽  
Thomas M. Hamill ◽  
...  

AbstractWildfire guidance two weeks ahead is needed for strategic planning of fire mitigation and suppression. However, fire forecasts driven by meteorological forecasts from numerical weather prediction models inherently suffer from systematic biases. This study uses several statistical-postprocessing methods to correct these biases and increase the skill of ensemble fire forecasts over the contiguous United States 8–14 days ahead. We train and validate the post-processing models on 20 years of European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) reforecasts and ERA5 reanalysis data for 11 meteorological variables related to fire, such as surface temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, cloud cover, and precipitation. The calibrated variables are then input to the Global ECMWF Fire Forecast (GEFF) system to produce probabilistic forecasts of daily fire-indicators which characterize the relationships between fuels, weather, and topography. Skill scores show that the post-processed forecasts overall have greater positive skill at Days 8–14 relative to raw and climatological forecasts. It is shown that the post-processed forecasts are more reliable at predicting above- and below-normal probabilities of various fire indicators than the raw forecasts and that the greatest skill for Days 8–14 is achieved by aggregating forecast days together.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayako Seiki ◽  
Satoru Yokoi ◽  
Masaki Katsumata

<p>The impact of diurnal precipitation over Sumatra Island, the Indonesian Maritime Continent (MC), on synoptic disturbances over the eastern Indian Ocean is examined using high-resolution rainfall data from the Global Satellite Mapping of Precipitation project and the Japanese 55-year Reanalysis data during the rainy season from September to April for the period 2000–2014. When the diurnal cycle is strong, the high precipitation area observed over Sumatra in the afternoon migrates offshore during nighttime and reaches 500 km off the coast on average. The strong diurnal events are followed by the development of synoptic disturbances over the eastern Indian Ocean for several days, and apparent twin synoptic disturbances straddling the equator develop only when the convective center of the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) lies over the Indian Ocean (MJO-IO). Without the MJO, the synoptic disturbances develop mainly south of the equator. The differences in the locations and behaviors of active synoptic disturbances are related to the strength of mean horizontal winds in the lower troposphere. During the MJO-IO, the intensification of mean northeasterly winds in the northern hemisphere blowing into the organized MJO convection in addition to mean southeasterly winds in the southern hemisphere facilitate the formation of the twin disturbances. These results suggest that seed disturbances arising from the diurnal offshore migration of precipitation from Sumatra develop differently depending on the mean states over the eastern Indian Ocean. Furthermore, it is shown that the MJO events with the strong diurnal cycle tend to have longer duration and continuing eastward propagation of active convection across the MC, whereas the convective activities of the other MJO events weaken considerably over the MC and develop again over the western Pacific. These results suggest that the strong diurnal cycle over Sumatra facilitates the smooth eastward propagation of the intraseasonal convection across the MC.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (12) ◽  
pp. 2225-2241
Author(s):  
Seoyeon Lee ◽  
Kwang-Yul Kim

AbstractReanalysis data have global coverage and faithfully render large-scale phenomena. On the other hand, regional and small-scale characteristics of atmospheric variability are poorly resolved. In an attempt to improve reanalysis data for regional use, a statistical downscaling strategy is developed based on cyclostationary empirical orthogonal function (CSEOF) analysis. The developed algorithm is applied to the National Centers for Environmental Prediction–National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP–NCAR) reanalysis data and to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) Interim Re-Analysis (ERA-Interim) data in order to produce winter temperatures at 60 Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) stations over the Korean Peninsula. The developed downscaling algorithm is evaluated by predicting winter daily temperatures from 17 November to 16 March for 35 years (1979–2014). For validating the downscaling algorithm the jackknife method is used, in which winter daily temperature is predicted over a 1-yr period not used for training. This procedure is repeated for the entire data period. The mean and variance of the resulting downscaled temperatures match reasonably well with those of the KMA measurements. Validation based on correlation and error variance shows that the temperatures at 60 KMA stations are faithfully reproduced based on coarse reanalysis data. The utility of this technique for downscaling model predictions based on future scenarios is also addressed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Oertel ◽  
Maxi Boettcher ◽  
Hanna Joos ◽  
Michael Sprenger ◽  
Heini Wernli

Abstract. Warm conveyor belts (WCBs) are important airstreams in extratropical cyclones. They can influence large-scale flow evolution by modifying the potential vorticity (PV) distribution during their cross-isentropic ascent. Although WCBs are typically described as slantwise-ascending and stratiform-cloud-producing airstreams, recent studies identified convective activity embedded within the large-scale WCB cloud band. However, the impacts of this WCB-embedded convection have not been investigated in detail. In this study, we systematically analyze the influence of embedded convection in an eastern North Atlantic WCB on the cloud and precipitation structure, on the PV distribution, and on larger-scale flow. For this reason, we apply online trajectories in a high-resolution convection-permitting simulation and perform a composite analysis to compare quasi-vertically ascending convective WCB trajectories with typical slantwise-ascending WCB trajectories. We find that the convective WCB ascent leads to substantially stronger surface precipitation and the formation of graupel in the middle to upper troposphere, which is absent for the slantwise WCB category, indicating the key role of WCB-embedded convection for precipitation extremes. Compared to the slantwise WCB trajectories, the initial equivalent potential temperature of the convective WCB trajectories is higher, and the convective WCB trajectories originate from a region of larger potential instability, which gives rise to more intense cloud diabatic heating and stronger cross-isentropic ascent. Moreover, the signature of embedded convection is distinctly imprinted in the PV structure. The diabatically generated low-level positive PV anomalies, associated with a cyclonic circulation anomaly, are substantially stronger for the convective WCB trajectories. The slantwise WCB trajectories lead to the formation of a widespread region of low-PV air (that still have weakly positive PV values) in the upper troposphere, in agreement with previous studies. In contrast, the convective WCB trajectories form mesoscale horizontal PV dipoles at upper levels, with one pole reaching negative PV values. On a larger scale, these individual mesoscale PV anomalies can aggregate to elongated PV dipole bands extending from the convective updraft region, which are associated with coherent larger-scale circulation anomalies. An illustrative example of such a convectively generated PV dipole band shows that within around 10 h the negative PV pole is advected closer to the upper-level waveguide, where it strengthens the isentropic PV gradient and contributes to the formation of a jet streak. This suggests that the mesoscale PV anomalies produced by embedded convection upstream organize and persist for several hours and therefore can influence the synoptic-scale circulation. They thus can be dynamically relevant, influence the jet stream and (potentially) the downstream flow evolution, which are highly relevant aspects for medium-range weather forecast. Finally, our results imply that a distinction between slantwise and convective WCB trajectories is meaningful because the convective WCB trajectories are characterized by distinct properties.


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