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Fronts, Airstreams, and Airstream Boundaries
The first manuscript from this collaboration is now available:
Cohen, R. A., and D. M. Schultz, 2005:
Contraction rate and its relationship to frontogenesis, the Lyapunov
exponent, fluid trapping, and airstream boundaries.
Mon. Wea. Rev., 133, 1353-1369. [AMS] [PDF]
One use of these diagnostics is to diagnose fluid trapping. For an illustration of this, see this case study of a vorticity maximum as observed in water-vapor imagery.
Snapshots of trajectories and airstream boundaries:
ERICA IOP 5:
Cyclone in Diffluent Flow
ERICA IOP 8:
Cyclone in Confluent Flow
Bob's page (with animations of ERICA IOP 5 and IOP 8)
Abstract for the
11th Cyclone Workshop
Abstract for the 10th
Cyclone Workshop
Return to
David Schultz's homepage.
Fronts, Airstreams, and Airstream Boundaries
The first manuscript from this collaboration is now available:
Cohen, R. A., and D. M. Schultz, 2005:
Contraction rate and its relationship to frontogenesis, the Lyapunov
exponent, fluid trapping, and airstream boundaries.
Mon. Wea. Rev., in press. [PDF]
One use of these diagnostics is to diagnose fluid trapping. For an illustration of this, see this case study of a vorticity maximum as observed in water-vapor imagery.
Snapshots of trajectories and airstream boundaries:
ERICA IOP 5:
Cyclone in Diffluent Flow
ERICA IOP 8:
Cyclone in Confluent Flow
Bob's page (with animations of ERICA IOP 5 and IOP 8)
Abstract for the
11th Cyclone Workshop
Abstract for the 10th
Cyclone Workshop
Return to
David Schultz's homepage.
http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~schultz/communication.html
This web page was developed for our summer Research Experience for Undergraduates program at the Oklahoma Weather Center, but the links are applicable to many different types of writers. I have developed a 4-hour workshop on good scientific communication skills and have presented this material to a variety of different scientific organizations. I'd be happy to present this workshop in a number of different formats at your group. Email me to find out how.
Return to the
National Severe Storms Laboratory.
Return to David Schultz's homepage.
david.schultz@noaa.gov
Last update: 5 July 2005
http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~schultz/communication.html
This web page was developed for our summer Research Experience for Undergraduates program at the Oklahoma Weather Center, but the links are applicable to many different types of writers. I have developed a 4-hour workshop on good scientific communication skills and have presented this material to a variety of different scientific organizations. I'd be happy to present this workshop in a number of different formats at your group. Email me to find out how.
Return to the
National Severe Storms Laboratory.
Return to David Schultz's homepage.
david.schultz@noaa.gov
Last update: 5 July 2005
David Schultz 5/27/03
Return to
David Schultz's homepage.Flash Flooding and Potential Vorticity
The goal was to see the extent to which mid- and upper-tropospheric potential vorticity anomalies precede flash-flooding events. Steve's research found that for five cases he examined, four of the cases suggested that looking for these potential vorticity anomalies was a useful precursor to flash floods.
While this is suggestive, there are many caveats that remain unanswered at this time.
If you have any further
questions about the research discussed here, or desire a manuscript,
please feel free to write to me: david.schultz@noaa.gov.
Return to
David Schultz's homepage.
> So, a weather question..... Here everything is El nino, El nino
> ..... but in your penultimate post it seemed like it might be
> inappropriate to ascribe certain weather systems to el nino.... what are
> the facts, in layman's terms.
Sara,
Fact 1: El Nino is a warming of the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean. The atmosphere responds to that warming by producing lower surface pressure above the warm water. That atmospheric response is called the Southern Oscillation. Therefore, when you hear the media talk about how the El Nino will affect you, they really mean how the atmospheric response to the El Nino will affect you.
Fact 2: Whether there is an El Nino going on or not, weather happens. Storms come and go. Floods happen. Droughts happen. Therefore, if southern California has a big rainstorm in February 1998, we have no way of knowing whether it would have occurred were we not having an El Nino. Now, if southern California gets a large number of storms in January through March 1998 and gets washed away, AND, we as atmospheric scientists can say, "the unusually heavy rains in S. CA were due to a jet stream that was farther south than usual because the convection over the equatorial Pacific Ocean . . . (more causative links omitted) . . . which is a direct response to the warm water in that area due to the El Nino", then we have made a link between the heavy rains in a climatological sense and El Nino.
Note added 7/31/99: The excellent paper by Barsugli et al. (1999) in
the July 1999 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
is one way that showing the link between individual weather events and
larger-scale processes might be explored.
Just remember, if anyone tries to pin a specific weather event on El
Nino or even a general climate anomaly without having done the work
(i.e., the causative links), they shouldn't be taken seriously.
Fact 3: The atmosphere has been known to respond to different
El Nino episodes differently. Simply put, not every year that has an
El Nino has the same weather. AND not every place on the earth is
sensitive to El Ninos. Here in Oklahoma, we're split between having a
cold winter and a warm winter. My own research
(Schultz et al., January 1998, Monthly Weather Review,
pp. 5-27) indicates that cold frontal passages in the southern Plains
of the U.S. (e.g., Texas, Oklahoma), Mexico, and Central America are
about twice as likely to occur during El Nino years than La Nina years
(the opposite pattern), but that doesn't necessarily mean colder
temperatures on average because the cold air may not last as long.
The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, is very sensitive to the
effects of El Nino. Snowfall in the Cascade Mountains can be much
below normal because of the diverted jet stream during an El Nino
year.
Anyway, that's about it for now. I was actually on a radio talk show
here in Norman about two months ago talking about El Nino and tried
to make the same points. I've been getting the same questions, so
I think I'll make this email into an essay on my web page. Check it
out in the near future.
Take care,
Dave
P.S. If you want further information about El Ninos, check out the
following web pages:
NOAA's
Climate Prediction Center and NOAA's Pacific
Marine Environmental Laboratory.
Return to
David Schultz's homepage.
Since 10/14/97, you are visitor number:
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© University of Oklahoma College of Geosciences
NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory/FRDD, Suite 4356
120 David L. Boren Blvd
Norman, OK 73072-7326
phone: (405) 325-6136
fax: not known at this time
Room: National Weather Center 4360
david.schultz@noaa.gov
|
The
NSSL Historical Weather Data Archives
The Increasing Costs of AMS Conferences
The Mysteries of Mammatus Clouds by Schultz and Coauthors
The Synoptic Regulation of Dryline Intensity by Schultz, Weiss, and Hoffman
On the Use of Indices and Parameters in Forecasting Severe Storms by Doswell and Schultz
Climatology of Elevated Severe Convective Storms by Kate Horgan et al.
Fred Sanders
Symposium: Photos and the Science of Cold Fronts
Welcome to my homepage. Here at NSSL, I perform research within the confines of the general topic of Synoptic-Dynamic Meteorology. The goal of synoptic-dynamic meteorologists is not only to forecast the weather, but to explain how and why the weather works the way it does. In this way, we understand why our weather forecasts are successful or not so successful, and find methods to improve the science of weather forecasting. I am primarily an observationalist, but my research, where appropriate, also entails numerical modeling (both idealized and real-data) and the development of theory and tools (methods, equations) for meteorological diagnosis.
Return to the
National Severe Storms Laboratory.
David Schultz
david.schultz@noaa.gov
Last update: 22 May 2006
Number of visitors:
Counter courtesy of Net Digits
(initiated late 1995).
Number of hits:
(initiated 1/13/99).
NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory/FRDD, Suite 4356
120 David L. Boren Blvd
Norman, OK 73072-7326
phone: (405) 325-6136
fax: not known at this time
Room: National Weather Center 4360
david.schultz@noaa.gov
|
The
NSSL Historical Weather Data Archives
The Increasing Costs of AMS Conferences
The Mysteries of Mammatus Clouds by Schultz and Coauthors
The Synoptic Regulation of Dryline Intensity by Schultz, Weiss, and Hoffman
Cloud-Top Temperatures of Precipitating Winter Clouds by Hanna, Schultz, and Irving
On the Use of Indices and Parameters in Forecasting Severe Storms by Doswell and Schultz
Banded Convection Caused by Frontogenesis in a Conditionally, Symmetrically, and
Inertially Unstable Environment by Schultz and Knox
Climatology of Elevated Severe Convective Storms by Kate Horgan et al.
Fred Sanders
Symposium: Photos and the Science of Cold Fronts
Welcome to my homepage. Here at NSSL, I perform research within the confines of the general topic of Synoptic-Dynamic Meteorology. The goal of synoptic-dynamic meteorologists is not only to forecast the weather, but to explain how and why the weather works the way it does. In this way, we understand why our weather forecasts are successful or not so successful, and find methods to improve the science of weather forecasting. I am primarily an observationalist, but my research, where appropriate, also entails numerical modeling (both idealized and real-data) and the development of theory and tools (methods, equations) for meteorological diagnosis.
Return to the
National Severe Storms Laboratory.
David Schultz
david.schultz@noaa.gov
Last update: 22 May 2006
Number of visitors:
Counter courtesy of Net Digits
(initiated late 1995).
Number of hits:
(initiated 1/13/99).
Lightning in Winter Storms
Schultz, D. M., 1999: Lake-effect snowstorms in northern Utah and western New York with and without lightning. Wea. Forecasting, 14, 1023-1031. [AMS] [PDF] [HTML]
Jim Steenburgh and collaborators have written a paper on lake-effect snowstorms over the Great Salt Lake. In that paper, they develop a climatology of 16 well-defined events over the last 5 years (see their Table 1).
Of the 16 lake-effect snowbands, three of those bands produced cloud-to-ground lightning as detected by the National Lightning Detection Network (courtesy of Gary Huffines and Richard Orville, Texas A&M). I compiled the proximity soundings (Salt Lake City) for each event.
I constructed a similar plot for the dewpoint temperatures.
Note that the LTG soundings are warmer and moister in the lower troposphere than the NO LTG soundings. In fact, every LTG sounding has a warmer surface and 700 hPa temperature than all the NO LTG soundings. There appears to be no difference between the two groups (LTG and NO LTG) for the lower-tropospheric lapse rate, as measured by the surface-700-hPa temperature.
The Great-Salt-Lake temperatures (courtesy of Scott Halvorson, University of Utah) for the LTG cases were 13.5, 14.0, and 18.0 deg C. For the NO LTG cases, they were 2.0-12.0 deg C.
Two similar plots for lake-effect snowstorms in Buffalo, derived from a series of dates listed in Moore and Orville (1990, Monthly Weather Review), can be seen here (temperature) and here (dewpoint).
That warm lower tropospheres favor lightning doesn't hold all the time. Here is an example (courtesy of Jim LaDue, Operational Support Facility) of a temperature and dewpoint sounding taken 3 hours before two positive cloud-to-ground strokes recorded by the NLDN. Note that it is nearly -20 C at the surface!
These results are in agreement with those of Holle and Cortinas (1998). In particular, their Fig. 2 shows that the number of reports of thunder is greater at Salt Lake City and Buffalo for surface temperatures greater than 0 degrees C.
MacGorman and Rust (1998, 292) summarize their review of lightning in winter storms with, ``we are aware of no thorough scientific investigation of causal relationships between the electrical state of winter storms and their snowfall. Extensive tests to evaluate the proposed hypotheses concerning possible links between lightning and the mesoscale and synoptic scale meteorology associated with winter storms have yet to be performed.'' I hope that this research provides some evidence towards understanding the synoptic-scale environment for lightning in winter storms. Hopefully, this work will also lead to operational criteria for forecasting wintertime lightning.
If you have any further
questions about the research discussed here, or desire a manuscript,
please feel free to write to me: david.schultz@noaa.gov.
Return to
David Schultz's homepage.
Class time: 9:30-11:30 am, Thursdays (starting Aug. 24)
Class location: NSSL Main Conference Room (first floor)
Prerequisites: Permission of Instructor
Register under section 028 for 1-3 credits. The grading is S/U.
This course will be primarily reading and discussion on synoptic-scale influences on convection. Topics to be covered will depend on those enrolled, but may include the following: spatial and temporal climatology of deep moist convection, convection in the desert Southwest, synoptic-scale effects on convection, observations of convection.
August 24:
An Overview of Convection and Synoptics
Doswell (2001):
Severe Convective Storms -- An Overview
Doswell and Bosart (2001): Extratropical
Synoptic-Scale Processes and Severe Convection
August 31: Cyclone Workshop-Schultz out of town: Jack Kain guest-moderates
Doswell (1982): The Operational Meteorology of Convective Weather
Volume I: Operational Mesoanalysis. NOAA Tech Memo NWS NSSFC-5
Johns and Doswell (1992): Severe local storms forecasting. WAF, 7, 588-612.
Doswell et al. (1996): Flash flood forecasting: An ingredients-based
methodology. WAF, 11, 560-581.
September 7:
Convection Climatology: Big Picture
Hsu and Wallace (1976): The global distribution of the annual and semiannual cycles in precipitation. MWR, 104, 1093-1101.
Garreaud and Wallace (1997): The diurnal march of convective
cloudiness over the Americas. MWR, 125, 3157-3171.
Iskenderian (1995): A 10-year climatology of Northern Hemispheric
tropical cloud plumes and their composite flow patterns. J. Climate, 8, 1630-1637.
Laing and Fritsch (1997): The global populations of mesoscale convective complexes. QJRMS, 123, 389-405.
Laing and Fritsch (2000): The large-scale environments of the global populations of mesoscale convective complexes. MWR, 128, 2756-2776.
September 14:
Convection Climatology of U.S.
Wallace (1975): Diurnal variations in precipitation and thunderstorm
frequency over the conterminous U.S. MWR, 103, 406-419.
Changnon (1988a,b): Climatography of thunder events in the
conterminous U.S. Parts I and II. J. Climate, 1, 389-398, 399-405.
Karl and Knight (1998): Secular trends of precipitation amount, frequency, and intensity in the United States. BAMS, 79, 231-241.
September 21:Convective Initiation
Fulks (1951): The Instability Line. Compendium of Meteorology. Amer. Meteor. Soc.
Newton (1963): Dynamics of Severe Convective Storms. Severe Local Storms Monograph, 5(27), Amer. Meteor. Soc., 33-58.
Beebe and Bates, 1955: A mechanism for assisting in the release of convective instability. MWR, 83, 1-10.
Beebe, R., 1958: Tornado proximity soundings. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.,
39, 195-201.
September 28: Schultz out of town: Prof. Jim Moore guest
moderates
Great Plains Elevated Mixed Layers
Carlson et al., 1983: Elevated mixed layers in the severe storm
environment---Conceptual model and case studies. MWR, 111, 1453-1473.
Lanicci, John M., Thomas T. Warner, 1991: A Synoptic Climatology of
the Elevated Mixed-Layer Inversion over the Southern Great
Plains in Spring. Part I: Structure, Dynamics, and Seasonal
Evolution. Weather and Forecasting: Vol. 6, No. 2,
pp. 181-197.
Lanicci, John M., Thomas T. Warner, 1991: A
Synoptic Climatology of the Elevated Mixed-Layer Inversion over
the Southern Great Plains in Spring. Part II: The Life Cycle of the Lid. Vol. 6, No. 2,
pp. 198-213.
Lanicci, John M., Thomas T. Warner, 1991: A
Synoptic Climatology of the Elevated Mixed-Layer Inversion over
the Southern Great Plains in Spring. Part III: Relationship to
Severe-Storms Climatology. Weather and Forecasting: Vol. 6, No.
2, pp. 214-226.
October 5: Schultz out of town: Dave Stensrud guest moderates
Low-Level Jets
Stensrud (1996): Importance
of Low-Level Jets to Climate: A Review. J. Climate, 9,
1698-1711.
Bonner (1968): Climatology of the low-level jet. MWR, 96, 833-850.
Hoecker (1963): Three southerly low-level jet streams delineated by
the Weather Bureau special pibal network of 1961. MWR, 91,
573-582.
Rasmussen (1967): Atmospheric water vapor transport and the water
balance of North America. Part I: Characteristics of the water vapor
flux field. MWR, 95, 403-426.
Thompson et al. (1994): Autumnal
return of tropical air to the Gulf of Mexico's coastal plain. WAF,
9, 348-360.
Higgins et al (1997): Influence of the Great Plains low-level jet on
summertime precipitation and moisture transport over the central U.S.
J. Climate, 10, 481-507.
October 12: Elevated Convection
Colman (1990): Thunderstorms above frontal surfaces in environments
without positive CAPE. Part I: A climatology. MWR, 118,
1103-1121.
Colman (1990): Thunderstorms above frontal surfaces in environments
without positive CAPE. Part II: Organization and instability
mechanisms. MWR, 118, 1123-1144.
Williams (1991): Comments on "Thunderstorms above frontal surfaces in
environments without positive CAPE. Part I: A climatology." MWR, 119,
2511-2513.
Colman, Bradley R., 1991: Reply.
Monthly Weather Review: Vol. 119, No. 10, pp. 2514-2514.
Moore et al., 1998: Heavy precipitation associated with elevated thunderstorms formed in a convectively unstable layer aloft. Meteorol. Applications, 5, 373-384.
October 19:Convection and Extratropical Cyclones
Uccellini, 1990: Processes contributing to the rapid development of
extratropical cyclones. Extratropical Cyclones, The Erik Palmen
Memorial Volume, C. W. Newton and E. O. Holopainen, Eds.,
Amer. Meteor. Soc., 81-105.
Browning, K. A., 1990: Organization of clouds and precipitation in
extratropical cyclones. Extratropical Cyclones, The Erik
Palmen Memorial Volume, C. W. Newton and E. O. Holopainen,
Eds., Amer. Meteor. Soc., 129-153.
Dickinson, M. J., L. F. Bosart, W. E. Bracken, G. J. Hakim,
D. M. Schultz, M. A. Bedrick, and K. R. Tyle, 1997: The March 1993
Superstorm cyclogenesis: Incipient phase synoptic- and
convective-scale flow interaction and model performance. Monthly
Weather Review, 125, 3041-3072. |PDF
FILE|
October 26: North American Monsoon and Jim Moore seminar
Barlow, Mathew, Sumant Nigam, Ernesto H. Berbery, 1998: Evolution
of the North American Monsoon System. Journal of Climate:
Vol. 11, No. 9, pp. 2238-2257.
Douglas, Machael W., Robert A. Maddox,, Kenneth Howard, Sergio Reyes ,
1993: The
Mexican Monsoon. Journal of Climate: Vol. 6, No. 8,
pp. 1665-1678.
Higgins, R. W., Y. Yao, X. L. Wang, 1997: Influence
of the North American Monsoon System on the U.S. Summer
Precipitation Regime. Journal of Climate: Vol. 10, No. 10,
pp. 2600-2622.
November 2: Arizona Convection: Dave Schultz out of town.
Mike Douglas Guest Moderates
Maddox, Robert A., Darren M. McCollum, Kenneth W. Howard, 1995:
Large-Scale Patterns Associated with Severe Summertime
Thunderstorms over Central Arizona. Weather and Forecasting:
Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 763-778.
Wallace, Clinton E., Robert A. Maddox, Kenneth W. Howard, 1999:
Summertime Convective Storm Environments in Central Arizona: Local
Observations. Weather and Forecasting: Vol. 14, No. 6,
pp. 994-1006.
Carleton, A. M., 1986: Synoptic-dynamic character of bursts and
breaks in the southwest U.S. summer precipitation singularity. J.
Climatology, 6, 605-623. (pages 617-623 optional).
November 9:
Orographic Convective Initiation and Brad Smull seminar
Banta (1990): The Role of Mountain Flows in Making Clouds.
Atmospheric Processes over Complex Terrain, W. Blumen, Ed.,
Amer. Meteor. Soc., 229-283
November 16: Orographic Convective Initiation (continued)
Banta and Schaaf (1987): Thunderstorm genesis zones in the Colorado
Rocky Mountains as determined by traceback of geosynchronous satellite
images. MWR, 115, 463-476.
Haiden (2000): Mountain cumulus initiation along the Colorado Front
Range. Ninth Conf. on Mountain Meteorology, Aspen, Colorado,
Amer. Meteor. Soc., 352-354.
November 23: Thanksgiving
November 30: Microscale Effects
Austin, 1948: A note on cumulus growth in a nonsaturated
environment. J. Meteor., 5, 103-107.
Yuter, Sandra E., Robert A. Houze Jr., 1995: Three-Dimensional
Kinematic and Microphysical Evolution of Florida
Cumulonimbus. Part
I: Spatial Distribution of Updrafts, Downdrafts, and
Precipitation. Monthly Weather Review: Vol. 123, No. 7,
pp. 1921-1940.
Yuter, Sandra E., Robert A. Houze Jr., 1995: Three-Dimensional
Kinematic and Microphysical Evolution of Florida
Cumulonimbus. Part
II: Frequency Distributions of Vertical Velocity, Reflectivity,
and Differential Reflectivity. Monthly Weather Review:
Vol. 123, No. 7, pp. 1941-1963.
Yuter, Sandra E., Robert A. Houze Jr., 1995: Three-Dimensional
Kinematic and Microphysical Evolution of Florida
Cumulonimbus. Part
III: Vertical Mass Transport, Maw Divergence, and
Synthesis. Monthly Weather Review: Vol. 123, No. 7,
pp. 1964-1983.
December 7:
Miscellaneous Topics and Where Do We Go From Here?
Roebber, P.J. and L.F. Bosart, 1998: The
sensitivity of precipitation to circulation details. Part I: An
analysis of regional analogues. Mon. Wea. Rev., 126, 437-455.
Bryan, George H., Michael J. Fritsch, 2000:
Moist Absolute Instability: The Sixth Static Stability State.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: Vol. 81,
No. 6, pp. 1207-1230.
Fritsch et al. (1998): Quantitative Precipitation Forecasting: Report
of the Eight Prospectus Team, U.S. Weather Research Program. BAMS,
79, 285-299.
Synoptic climatology
Heideman and Fritsch, 1988: Forcing mechanisms and other characteristics of significant summertime precipitation. WAF, 3, 115-130.
Epstein and Barnston 1990: A precipitation climatology of 5-day periods.
Hagemeyer 1991: A lower-tropospheric thermodynamic climatology for March through September: Some implications for thunderstorm forecasting.
Winkler et al. 1988: Seasonal variations in the diurnal characteristics of heavy hourly precipitation across the United States.
Brooks and Stensrud, 2000: Climatology of Heavy Rain Events in the United States from Hourly Precipitation Observations.
Observations of convection
Stensrud, D.J., 1996: Effects of a persistent, midlatitude mesoscale region of convection on the large-scale environment during the warm season.
Stensrud, D.J., and R.A. Maddox, 1988: Opposing mesoscale circulations: A case study.
Yuter and Houze 1995: Three-dimensional kinematic and microphysical evolution of Florida cumulonimbus. Parts I, II, and III.
Forecasting the mode of convection
OU Academic Integrity Website: http://www.ou.edu/provost/integrity/
Return to the David Schultz's Homepage.
David Schultz
david.schultz@noaa.gov
Last update: 16 November 2000
Number of hits: (initiated 4/26/00).
Schultz, D. M., and H. Wernli: Determining cyclone structure and evolution from large-scale flow. A web essay. (20 August 2001)
I taught a class at OU during Fall 2000 entitled Synoptic-Scale Influences on Convection (METR6990). (22 December 2000)