Abstract

Data from the California Land-Falling Jets Experiment (CALJET) are used to explore the causes of variations in flood severity in adjacent coastal watersheds within the Santa Cruz Mountains on 2–3 February 1998. While Pescadero Creek (rural) experienced its flood of record, the adjacent San Lorenzo Creek (heavily populated), attained only its fourth-highest flow. This difference resulted from conditions present while the warm sector of the storm, with its associated low-level jet, high moisture content, and weak static stability, was overhead. Rainfall in the warm sector was dominated by orographic forcing. While the wind speed strongly modulated rain rates on windward slopes, the wind direction positioned the edge of a rain shadow cast by the Santa Lucia Mountains partially over the San Lorenzo basin, thus protecting the city of Santa Cruz from a more severe flood. Roughly 26% ± 9% of the streamflow at flood peak on Pescadero Creek resulted from the warm-sector rainfall. Without this rainfall, the peak flow on Pescadero Creek would likely not have attained record status.

These results are complemented by a climatological analysis based on ∼50-yr-duration streamflow records for these and two other nearby windward watersheds situated ∼20 to 40 km farther to the east, and a comparison of this climatological analysis with composites of NCEP–NCAR reanalysis fields. The westernmost watersheds were found to have their greatest floods during El Niño winters, while the easternmost watersheds peaked during non–El Niño episodes. These results are consistent with the case study, that showed that the composite 925-mb, meridionally oriented wind direction during El Niños favors a rain shadow over the eastern watersheds. During non–El Niño periods, the composite, zonally oriented wind direction indicates that the sheltering effect of the rain shadow on the eastern watersheds is reduced, while weaker winds, less water vapor, and stronger stratification reduce the peak runoff in the western watersheds relative to El Niño periods.

These case study and climatological results illustrate the importance of conditions in the moisture-rich warm sector of landfalling Pacific winter storms. Although many other variables can influence flooding, this study shows that variations of ±10° in wind direction can modulate the location of orographically enhanced floods. While terrain can increase predictability (e.g., rainfall typically increases with altitude), the predictability is reduced when conditions are near a threshold separating different regimes (e.g., in or out of a rain shadow).

Abstract

Air pollution episodes in northern New England often are caused by transport of pollutants over water. Two such episodes in the summer of 2002 are examined (22–23 July and 11–14 August). In both cases, the pollutants that affected coastal New Hampshire and coastal southwest Maine were transported over coastal waters in stable layers at the surface. These layers were at least intermittently turbulent but retained their chemical constituents. The lack of deposition or deep vertical mixing on the overwater trajectories allowed pollutant concentrations to remain strong. The polluted plumes came directly from the Boston, Massachusetts, area. In the 22–23 July case, the trajectories were relatively straight and dominated by synoptic-scale effects, transporting pollution to the Maine coast. On 11–14 August, sea breezes brought polluted air from the coastal waters inland into New Hampshire.

Abstract

Dual-polarization scanning radar measurements, air temperature soundings, and a polarimetric radar-based particle identification scheme are used to generate maps and probability density functions (PDFs) of the ice water path (IWP) in Hurricanes Arthur (2014) and Irene (2011) at landfall. The IWP is separated into the contribution from small ice (i.e., ice crystals), termed small-particle IWP, and large ice (i.e., graupel and snow), termed large-particle IWP. Vertically profiling radar data from Hurricane Arthur suggest that the small ice particles detected by the scanning radar have fall velocities mostly greater than 0.25 m s⁻¹ and that the particle identification scheme is capable of distinguishing between small and large ice particles in a mean sense. The IWP maps and PDFs reveal that the total and large-particle IWPs range up to 10 kg m⁻², with the largest values confined to intense convective precipitation within the rainbands and eyewall. Small-particle IWP remains mostly <4 kg m⁻², with the largest small-particle IWP values collocated with maxima in the total IWP. PDFs of the small-to-total IWP ratio have shapes that depend on the precipitation type (i.e., intense convective, stratiform, or weak-echo precipitation). The IWP ratio distribution is narrowest (broadest) in intense convective (weak echo) precipitation and peaks at a ratio of about 0.1 (0.3).

Abstract

To gain a more complete observational understanding of atmospheric rivers (ARs) over the data-sparse open ocean, a diverse suite of mobile observing platforms deployed on NOAA’s R/V Ronald H. Brown (RHB) and G-IV research aircraft during the CalWater-2015 field campaign was used to describe the structure and evolution of a long-lived AR modulated by six frontal waves over the northeastern Pacific during 20–25 January 2015. Satellite observations and reanalysis diagnostics provided synoptic-scale context, illustrating the warm, moist southwesterly airstream within the quasi-stationary AR situated between an upper-level trough and ridge. The AR remained offshore of the U.S. West Coast but made landfall across British Columbia where heavy precipitation fell. A total of 47 rawinsondes launched from the RHB provided a comprehensive thermodynamic and kinematic depiction of the AR, including uniquely documenting an upward intrusion of strong water vapor transport in the low-level moist southwesterly flow during the passage of frontal waves 2–6. A collocated 1290-MHz wind profiler showed an abrupt frontal transition from southwesterly to northerly flow below 1 km MSL coinciding with the tail end of AR conditions. Shipborne radar and disdrometer observations in the AR uniquely captured key microphysical characteristics of shallow warm rain, convection, and deep mixed-phase precipitation. Novel observations of sea surface fluxes in a midlatitude AR documented persistent ocean surface evaporation and sensible heat transfer into the ocean. The G-IV aircraft flew directly over the ship, with dropsonde and radar spatial analyses complementing the temporal depictions of the AR from the RHB. The AR characteristics varied, depending on the location of the cross section relative to the frontal waves.

The New England High-Resolution Temperature Program seeks to improve the accuracy of summertime 2-m temperature and dewpoint temperature forecasts in the New England region through a collaborative effort between the research and operational components of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The four main components of this program are 1) improved surface and boundary layer observations for model initialization, 2) special observations for the assessment and improvement of model physical process parameterization schemes, 3) using model forecast ensemble data to improve upon the operational forecasts for near-surface variables, and 4) transfering knowledge gained to commercial weather services and end users. Since 2002 this program has enhanced surface temperature observations by adding 70 new automated Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) sites, identified and collected data from over 1000 non-NOAA mesonet sites, and deployed boundary layer profilers and other special instrumentation throughout the New England region to better observe the surface energy budget. Comparisons of these special datasets with numerical model forecasts indicate that near-surface temperature errors are strongly correlated to errors in the model-predicted radiation fields. The attenuation of solar radiation by aerosols is one potential source of the model radiation bias. However, even with these model errors, results from bias-corrected ensemble forecasts are more accurate than the operational model output statistics (MOS) forecasts for 2-m temperature and dewpoint temperature, while also providing reliable forecast probabilities. Discussions with commerical weather vendors and end users have emphasized the potential economic value of these probabilistic ensemble-generated forecasts.

Abstract

The Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)- and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-funded program, with private-sector and university partners, which aims to improve the accuracy of numerical weather prediction (NWP) model forecasts of wind speed in complex terrain for wind energy applications. A core component of WFIP2 was an 18-month field campaign that took place in the U.S. Pacific Northwest between October 2015 and March 2017. A large suite of instrumentation was deployed in a series of telescoping arrays, ranging from 500 km across to a densely instrumented 2 km × 2 km area similar in size to a high-resolution NWP model grid cell. Observations from these instruments are being used to improve our understanding of the meteorological phenomena that affect wind energy production in complex terrain and to evaluate and improve model physical parameterization schemes. We present several brief case studies using these observations to describe phenomena that are routinely difficult to forecast, including wintertime cold pools, diurnally driven gap flows, and mountain waves/wakes. Observing system and data product improvements developed during WFIP2 are also described.