scholarly journals Image Processing Based Atmospheric River Tracking Method Version 1 (IPART-1)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangzhi Xu ◽  
Xiaohui Ma ◽  
Ping Chang ◽  
Lin Wang

Abstract. Automated detection of atmospheric rivers (ARs) has been heavily relying on magnitude thresholding on either the integrated water vapor (IWV) or integrated vapor transport (IVT). Magnitude thresholding approaches can become problematic when detecting ARs in a warming climate, because of the increasing atmospheric moisture. A new AR detection method derived from an image processing algorithm is proposed in this work. Different from conventional thresholding methods, the new algorithm applies threshold to the spatio-temporal scale of ARs to achieve the detection, thus making it magnitude independent and applicable to both IWV- and IVT-based AR detections. Compared with conventional thresholding methods, it displays lower sensitivity to parameters and a greater tolerance to a wider range of water vapor flux intensities. A new method of tracking ARs is also proposed, based on a new AR axis identification method, and a modified Hausdorff distance that gives a measure of the geographical distances of AR axes pairs.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 4639-4662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guangzhi Xu ◽  
Xiaohui Ma ◽  
Ping Chang ◽  
Lin Wang

Abstract. Automated detection of atmospheric rivers (ARs) has been heavily relying on magnitude thresholding on either the integrated water vapor (IWV) or integrated vapor transport (IVT). Magnitude-thresholding approaches can become problematic when detecting ARs in a warming climate, because of the increasing atmospheric moisture. A new AR detection method derived from an image-processing algorithm is proposed in this work. Different from conventional thresholding methods, the new algorithm applies threshold to the spatiotemporal scale of ARs to achieve the detection, thus making it magnitude independent and applicable to both IWV- and IVT-based AR detection. Compared with conventional thresholding methods, it displays lower sensitivity to parameters and a greater tolerance towards a wider range of water vapor flux intensities. A new method of tracking ARs is also proposed, based on a new AR axis identification method and a modified Hausdorff distance that gives a measure of the geographical distances of AR axes pairs.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 1075
Author(s):  
Benjamin Doiteau ◽  
Meredith Dournaux ◽  
Nadège Montoux ◽  
Jean-Luc Baray

Atmospheric rivers are important atmospheric features implicated in the global water vapor budget, the cloud distribution, and the associated precipitation. The ARiD (Atmospheric River Detector) code has been developed to automatically detect atmospheric rivers from water vapor flux and has been applied to the ECMWF ERA5 archive over the period 1980–2020 above the Atlantic Ocean and Europe. A case study of an atmospheric river formed in the East Atlantic on August 2014 that reached France has been detailed using ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis, ground based observation data, and satellite products such as DARDAR, AIRS, GPCP, and GOES. This atmospheric river event presents a strong interaction with an intense upper tropospheric jet stream, which induced stratosphere–troposphere exchanges by tropopause fold. A 1980–2020 climatology of atmospheric rivers over Europe has been presented. The west of France, Iberian Peninsula, and British Islands are the most impacted regions by atmospheric rivers with an occurrence of up to four days per month during the October–April period. Up to 40% of the precipitation observed on the west European coast can be linked to the presence of ARs. No significant trend in the occurrence of the phenomena was found over 1980–2020.


2011 ◽  
Vol 284 (5) ◽  
pp. 1295-1298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Fiorani ◽  
Francesco Colao ◽  
Antonio Palucci ◽  
Davod Poreh ◽  
Alessandro Aiuppa ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongmei Ren ◽  
Ang Li ◽  
Pinhua Xie ◽  
Zhaokun Hu ◽  
Jin Xu ◽  
...  

<p>      Water vapor transport affects regional precipitation and climate change. The measurement of precipitable water and water vapor flux is of great significance to the study of precipitation and water vapor transport. In the study, a new method of computing the precipitable water and estimating the water vapor transport flux using multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) were presented. The calculated precipitable water and water vapor flux were compared to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis data and the correlation coefficient of the precipitable water, the zonal and meridional water vapor flux and ECMWF are r≥0.92, r=0.77 and r≥0.89, respectively. The seasonal and diurnal climatologies of precipitable water and water vapor flux in the coastal (Qingdao) and inland (Xi’an) cities of China using this method were analyzed from June 1, 2019 to May 31, 2020. The results indicated that the seasonal and diurnal variation characteristics of the precipitable water in the two cities were similar. The zonal fluxes of the two cities were mainly transported from west to east, Qingdao's meridional flux was mainly transported to the south, and Xi'an was mainly transported to the north. The results also indicated that the water vapor flux transmitting belts appear near 2km and 1.4km above the surface in Qingdao and appeared around 2.8km, 1.6km and 1.0km in Xi'an. </p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 1779-1794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Martin ◽  
F. Martin Ralph ◽  
Anna Wilson ◽  
Laurel DeHaan ◽  
Brian Kawzenuk

Abstract Mesoscale frontal waves have the potential to modify the hydrometeorological impacts of atmospheric rivers (ARs). The small scale and rapid growth of these waves pose significant forecast challenges. We examined a frontal wave that developed a secondary cyclone during the landfall of an extreme AR in Northern California. We document rapid changes in significant storm features including integrated vapor transport and precipitation and connect these to high forecast uncertainty at 1–4-days’ lead time. We also analyze the skill of the Global Ensemble Forecast System in predicting secondary cyclogenesis and relate secondary cyclogenesis prediction skill to forecasts of AR intensity, AR duration, and upslope water vapor flux in the orographic controlling layer. Leveraging a measure of reference accuracy designed for cyclogenesis, we found forecasts were only able to skillfully predict secondary cyclogenesis for lead times less than 36 h. Forecast skill in predicting the large-scale pressure pattern and integrated vapor transport was lost by 96-h lead time. For lead times longer than 36 h, the failure to predict secondary cyclogenesis led to significant uncertainty in forecast AR intensity and to long bias in AR forecast duration. Failure to forecast a warm front associated with the secondary cyclone at lead times less than 36 h caused large overprediction of upslope water vapor flux, an important indicator of orographic precipitation forcing. This study highlights the need to identify offshore mesoscale frontal waves in real time and to characterize the forecast uncertainty inherent in these events when creating hydrometeorological forecasts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bau-Show Lin ◽  
Huimin Lei ◽  
Ming-Che Hu ◽  
Supattra Visessri ◽  
Cheng-I Hsieh

This study presented a two-year data set of sensible heat and water vapor fluxes above a humid subtropical montane Cypress forest, located at 1650 m a.s.l. in northeastern Taiwan. The focuses of this study were to investigate (1) the diurnal and seasonal variations of canopy resistance and fluxes of sensible heat and water vapor above this forest; and (2) the mechanism of why a fixed canopy resistance could work when implementing the Penman–Monteith equation for diurnal hourly evapotranspiration estimation. Our results showed distinct seasonal variations in canopy resistance and water vapor flux, but on the contrary, the sensible heat flux did not change as much as the water vapor flux did with seasons. The seasonal variation patterns of the canopy resistance and water vapor flux were highly coupled with the meteorological factors. Also, the results demonstrated that a constant (fixed) canopy resistance was good enough for estimating the diurnal variation of evapotranspiration using Penman–Monteith equation. We observed a canopy resistance around 190 (s/m) for both the two warm seasons; and canopy resistances were around 670 and 320 (s/m) for the two cool seasons, respectively. In addition, our analytical analyses demonstrated that when the average canopy resistance is higher than 200 (s/m), the Penman–Monteith equation is less sensitive to the change of canopy resistance; hence, a fixed canopy resistance is suitable for the diurnal hourly evapotranspiration estimation. However, this is not the case when the average canopy resistance is less than 100 (s/m), and variable canopy resistances are needed. These two constraints (200 and 100) were obtained based on purely analytical analyses under a moderate meteorological condition (Rn = 600 W·m−2, RH = 60%, Ta = 20°C, U = 2 m·s−1) and a measurement height around two times of the canopy height.


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