Joint Occurrence of Heatwaves and Ozone Pollution and Increased Health Risks in Beijing, China: Roles of Synoptic Weather Pattern and Urbanization

Heatwaves (HWs) paired with higher ozone (O3) concentration at surface level pose a serious threat to human health. Their combined modulation of synoptic patterns and urbanization remains unclear. By using five years of summertime temperature and O3 concentrations observation in Beijing, this study explored potential drivers of compound HWs and O3 pollution events. Three unfavourable synoptic weather patterns were identified to dominate the compound HWs and O3 pollution events. The weather patterns contributing to enhance those conditions are characterized by sinking air motion, low boundary layer height, and hot temperatures. Under the synergistic stress of HWs and O3 pollution, the public mortality risk increased by approximately 12.59 % (95 % confidence interval: 4.66 %, 21.42 %). Relative to rural areas, urbanization caused higher risks for HWs, but lower risks for O3 over urban areas. In general, unfavourable synoptic patterns and urbanization can enhance the compound risk of events in Beijing by 45.46 % and 8.08 %, respectively. Our findings provide robust evidence and implications for forecasting compound heatwaves and O3 pollution event and its health risks in Beijing or in other urban areas all over the word having high concentrations of O3 and high-density populations.

A characterisation of Alpine mesocyclone occurrence

This work presents a characterisation of mesocyclone occurrence and frequency in the Alpine region, as observed from the Swiss operational radar network; 5 years of radar data are processed with a thunderstorm detection and tracking algorithm and subsequently with a new mesocyclone detection algorithm. A quality assessment of the radar domain provides additional information on the reliability of the tracking algorithms throughout the domain. The resulting data set provides the first insight into the spatiotemporal distribution of mesocyclones in the Swiss domain, with a more detailed focus on the influence of synoptic weather, diurnal cycle and terrain. Both on the northern and southern side of the Alps mesocyclonic signatures in thunderstorms occur regularly. The regions with the highest occurrence are predominantly the Southern Prealps and to a lesser degree the Northern Prealps. The parallels to hail research over the same region are discussed.

District level value-added dynamical-synoptic forecast system for rainfall

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Diverse synoptic weather patterns of warm-season heavy rainfall events in South Korea

This study identifies diverse synoptic weather patterns of warm-season heavy rainfall events (HREs) in South Korea. The HREs not directly connected to tropical cyclones (TCs) (81.1%) are typically associated with a midlatitude cyclone from eastern China, the expanded North Pacific high and strong southwesterly moisture transport in between. They are frequent both in the first (early summer) and second rainy periods (late summer) with impacts on the south coast and west of the mountainous region. In contrast, the HREs resulting from TCs (18.9%) are caused by the synergetic interaction between the TC and meandering midlatitude flow, especially in the second rainy period. The strong south-southeasterly moisture transport makes the southern and eastern coastal regions prone to the TC-driven HREs. By applying a self-organizing map algorithm to the non-TC HREs, their surface weather patterns are further classified into six clusters. Clusters 1 and 3 exhibit frontal boundary between the low and high with differing relative strengths. Clusters 2 and 5 feature an extratropical cyclone migrating from eastern China under different background sea-level pressure patterns. Cluster 4 is characterized by the expanded North Pacific high with no organized negative sea-level pressure anomaly, and cluster 6 displays a development of a moisture pathway between the continental and oceanic highs. Each cluster exhibits a distinct spatio-temporal occurrence distribution. The result provides useful guidance for predicting the HREs by depicting important factors to be differently considered depending on their synoptic categorization.

Revisiting the Precipitous Terrain Classification from a Meteorological Perspective

Takeoff and landing maneuvers can be particularly hazardous at airports surrounded by complex terrain. To address this, the Federal Aviation Administration has developed a Precipitous Terrain classification, as a way to impose more restrictive terrain clearances in the vicinity of complex terrain and to mitigate possible altimeter errors and pilot control problems experienced while executing instrument approach procedures. The current Precipitous Point Value (PPV) algorithm relies on the terrain characteristics within a local area of 2 NM, and is therefore static in time. In this work, we investigate the role of meteorological effects leading to potential aviation hazards over complex terrain, namely turbulence, altimeter setting errors and density altitude deviations. To that end, we combine observations with high-resolution numerical weather forecasts within a 2° × 2° region over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, containing three airports that are surrounded by Precipitous Terrain. Both available turbulence reports and model’s turbulence forecasts show little correlation with the PPV algorithm for the region analyzed, indicating that the static terrain characteristics cannot generally be used to reliably capture hazardous low-level turbulence events. Altimeter setting errors and density altitude effects are also found to be only very weakly correlated with the PPV algorithm. Altimeter setting errors contribute to hazardous conditions mainly during cold seasons, driven by synoptic weather systems, while density altitude effects are on the contrary predominantly present during the spring and summer months, and follow a very well-marked diurnal evolution modulated by surface radiative effects. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of high-resolution weather forecast information in determining aviation-relevant hazardous conditions over complex terrain.

A Characterisation of Alpine Mesocyclone Occurrence

This work presents a characterization of mesocyclone occurrence and frequency in the Alpine region, as observed from the Swiss operational radar network. Five years of radar data are processed with a thunderstorm detection and tracking algorithm and subsequently with a mesocyclone detection algorithm. A quality assessment of the radar domain provides additional information on the reliability of the tracking algorithms throughout the domain. The resulting data set provides the first insight into the spatio-temporal distribution of mesocyclones in the Swiss domain, with a more detailed focus on the influence of synoptic weather, diurnal cycle and terrain. Both on the northern and southern side of the Alps mesocyclonic signatures in thunderstorms are frequent. The regions with highest occurrence are predominantly the Southern Prealps and to a lesser degree the Northern Prealps. The parallels to hail research over the same region are discussed.