scholarly journals Comments on “The Tropospheric Land–Sea Warming Contrast as the Driver of Tropical Sea Level Pressure Changes”

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (10) ◽  
pp. 4293-4307 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Makarieva ◽  
V. G. Gorshkov ◽  
A. V. Nefiodov ◽  
D. Sheil ◽  
A. D. Nobre ◽  
...  

Abstract In their paper “The tropospheric land–sea warming contrast as the driver of tropical sea level pressure changes,” Bayr and Dommenget proposed a simple model of temperature-driven air redistribution to quantify the ratio between changes of sea level pressure ps and mean tropospheric temperature Ta in the tropics. This model assumes that the height of the tropical troposphere is isobaric. Here problems with this model are identified. A revised relationship between ps and Ta is derived governed by two parameters—the isobaric and isothermal heights—rather than just one. Further insight is provided by the earlier model of Lindzen and Nigam, which was the first to use the concept of isobaric height to relate tropical ps to air temperature, and they did this by assuming that isobaric height is always around 3 km and isothermal height is likewise near constant. Observational data, presented here, show that neither of these heights is spatially universal nor does their mean values match previous assumptions. Analyses show that the ratio of the long-term changes in ps and Ta associated with land–sea temperature contrasts in a warming climate—the focus of Bayr and Dommenget’s work—is in fact determined by the corresponding ratio of spatial differences in the annual mean ps and Ta. The latter ratio, reflecting lower pressure at higher temperature, is significantly impacted by the meridional pressure and temperature differences. Considerations of isobaric heights are shown to be unable to predict either spatial or temporal variation in ps. As noted by Bayr and Dommenget, the role of moisture dynamics in generating sea level pressure variation remains in need of further theoretical investigations.

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1387-1402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Bayr ◽  
Dietmar Dommenget

Abstract This article addresses the causes of the large-scale tropical sea level pressure (SLP) changes during climate change. The analysis presented here is based on model simulations, observed trends, and the seasonal cycle. In all three cases the regional changes of tropospheric temperature (Ttropos) and SLP are strongly related to each other [considerably more strongly than (sea) surface temperature and SLP]. This relationship basically follows the Bjerknes circulation theorem, with relatively low regional SLP where there is relatively high Ttropos and vice versa. A simple physical model suggests a tropical SLP response to horizontally inhomogeneous warming in the tropical Ttropos, with a sensitivity coefficient of about −1.7 hPa K−1. This relationship explains a large fraction of observed and predicted changes in the tropical SLP. It is shown that in climate change model simulations the tropospheric land–sea warming contrast is the most significant structure in the regional Ttropos changes relative to the tropical mean changes. Since the land–sea warming contrast exists in the absence of any atmospheric circulation changes, it can be argued that the large-scale response of tropical SLP changes is to first order a response to the tropical land–sea warming contrast. Furthermore, as the land–sea warming contrast is mostly moisture dependent, the models predict a stronger warming and decreasing SLP in the drier regions from South America to Africa and a weaker warming and increasing SLP over the wetter Indo-Pacific warm pool region. This suggests an increase in the potential for deep convection conditions over the Atlantic sector and a decrease over the Indo-Pacific warm pool region in the future.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Lena Mohammed Abbas

This research studies distribution of thunderstorm in Iraq for the period (1998-2011), the result showed that  the largest regions which had been hit by lightning stroke were between latitude (35-36◦)E and longitude (45-46◦)N, and April was the most frequent of lightning occurrence, also the results showed  that the number of flashes of most lightning cases were between (50-100) with higher number of flashes for some special cases. The studying of meteorological parameters which accompanied thunderstorm formation such as (Mean sea level pressure, Lifting index, relative humidity and Vertical velocity) illustrates the values of mean sea level pressure were increased during the hours after lightning occurrence comparing with their values before and at the time of lightning occurrence and their monthly mean value much greater than that recorded at the time of lightning occurrence, in addition the values of lifting index were negative at the time of lightning occurrence that refer to instability whereas their monthly average showed positive values. The values of relative humidity were greater at lightning recorded time at the three levels (500, 700, 1000)mb and also through the hours before and after this time comparing with their monthly mean. Vertical velocity values were negative for the three levels at the time of lightning occurrence that is referring to upward motion which is necessary for thundercloud initiation, and their monthly mean values were mostly negative at (500, 700)mb whereas were positive at the surface level


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 63-85
Author(s):  
P. Yu. Romanov ◽  
N. A. Romanova

Trends in the mean sea-level pressure (SLP) in Antarctica in the last four decades (1980– 2020) have been examined using in situ observations and reanalysis data. The analysis involved time series of monthly mean, season-mean and yearly-mean values of the SLP derived from four reanalysis datasets, NCEP/NCAR, ERA5, JRA55, MERRA2, and from surface observations acquired from the Reference Antarctic Data for Environmental Research (READER) dataset. With this data we have evaluated the trends, characterized their seasonal peculiarities and variation across the high-latitude region of the Southern Hemisphere. The results of the analysis confirmed the dominance of decreasing trends in the annual mean SLP in Antarctica. Larger negative trends were found in the Western Antarctica with the most pronounced pressure drop in the South Pacific. The long-term decrease in the annual mean SLP in Antarctica was due to strong negative pressure trends in the austral summer and fall season whereas in winter and in spring the trends turn to mixed and mostly positive. The comparison of multiyear time series of SLP reanalysis data with in situ observations at Antarctic stations revealed a considerable overestimate of negative SLP trends in the NCEP/NCAR dataset. Among the four examined reanalysis datasets, ERA5 provided the best agreement with the station data on the annual mean and monthly mean SLP trend values.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shraddha Gupta ◽  
Niklas Boers ◽  
Florian Pappenberger ◽  
Jürgen Kurths

AbstractTropical cyclones (TCs) are one of the most destructive natural hazards that pose a serious threat to society, particularly to those in the coastal regions. In this work, we study the temporal evolution of the regional weather conditions in relation to the occurrence of TCs using climate networks. Climate networks encode the interactions among climate variables at different locations on the Earth’s surface, and in particular, time-evolving climate networks have been successfully applied to study different climate phenomena at comparably long time scales, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, different monsoon systems, or the climatic impacts of volcanic eruptions. Here, we develop and apply a complex network approach suitable for the investigation of the relatively short-lived TCs. We show that our proposed methodology has the potential to identify TCs and their tracks from mean sea level pressure (MSLP) data. We use the ERA5 reanalysis MSLP data to construct successive networks of overlapping, short-length time windows for the regions under consideration, where we focus on the north Indian Ocean and the tropical north Atlantic Ocean. We compare the spatial features of various topological properties of the network, and the spatial scales involved, in the absence and presence of a cyclone. We find that network measures such as degree and clustering exhibit significant signatures of TCs and have striking similarities with their tracks. The study of the network topology over time scales relevant to TCs allows us to obtain crucial insights into the effects of TCs on the spatial connectivity structure of sea-level pressure fields.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamish Steptoe ◽  
Nicholas Henry Savage ◽  
Saeed Sadri ◽  
Kate Salmon ◽  
Zubair Maalick ◽  
...  

AbstractHigh resolution simulations at 4.4 km and 1.5 km resolution have been performed for 12 historical tropical cyclones impacting Bangladesh. We use the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting 5th generation Re-Analysis (ERA5) to provide a 9-member ensemble of initial and boundary conditions for the regional configuration of the Met Office Unified Model. The simulations are compared to the original ERA5 data and the International Best Track Archive for Climate Stewardship (IBTrACS) tropical cyclone database for wind speed, gust speed and mean sea-level pressure. The 4.4 km simulations show a typical increase in peak gust speed of 41 to 118 knots relative to ERA5, and a deepening of minimum mean sea-level pressure of up to −27 hPa, relative to ERA5 and IBTrACS data. The downscaled simulations compare more favourably with IBTrACS data than the ERA5 data suggesting tropical cyclone hazards in the ERA5 deterministic output may be underestimated. The dataset is freely available from 10.5281/zenodo.3600201.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 661
Author(s):  
Mohamed Freeshah ◽  
Xiaohong Zhang ◽  
Erman Şentürk ◽  
Muhammad Arqim Adil ◽  
B. G. Mousa ◽  
...  

The Northwest Pacific Ocean (NWP) is one of the most vulnerable regions that has been hit by typhoons. In September 2018, Mangkhut was the 22nd Tropical Cyclone (TC) over the NWP regions (so, the event was numbered as 1822). In this paper, we investigated the highest amplitude ionospheric variations, along with the atmospheric anomalies, such as the sea-level pressure, Mangkhut’s cloud system, and the meridional and zonal wind during the typhoon. Regional Ionosphere Maps (RIMs) were created through the Hong Kong Continuously Operating Reference Stations (HKCORS) and International GNSS Service (IGS) data around the area of Mangkhut typhoon. RIMs were utilized to analyze the ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) response over the maximum wind speed points (maximum spots) under the meticulous observations of the solar-terrestrial environment and geomagnetic storm indices. Ionospheric vertical TEC (VTEC) time sequences over the maximum spots are detected by three methods: interquartile range method (IQR), enhanced average difference (EAD), and range of ten days (RTD) during the super typhoon Mangkhut. The research findings indicated significant ionospheric variations over the maximum spots during this powerful tropical cyclone within a few hours before the extreme wind speed. Moreover, the ionosphere showed a positive response where the maximum VTEC amplitude variations coincided with the cyclone rainbands or typhoon edges rather than the center of the storm. The sea-level pressure tends to decrease around the typhoon periphery, and the highest ionospheric VTEC amplitude was observed when the low-pressure cell covers the largest area. The possible mechanism of the ionospheric response is based on strong convective cells that create the gravity waves over tropical cyclones. Moreover, the critical change state in the meridional wind happened on the same day of maximum ionospheric variations on the 256th day of the year (DOY 256). This comprehensive analysis suggests that the meridional winds and their resulting waves may contribute in one way or another to upper atmosphere-ionosphere coupling.


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