Abstract

Previous research revealed that if individuals personally experience an unusual weather event as a result of global warming (vs no personal experience), they may hold higher belief certainty that global warming is happening and hence develop more favorable attitudes toward mitigation actions. However, much of the previous research focused on self-reported personal experience and global warming beliefs using cross-sectional surveys; reverse causality is thus possible. Based on weather records and survey data, the present research examined whether actual weather events can influence one’s perceptions of unusual weather and belief certainty. Severe Typhoon Fitow 2013, but not hot summer temperatures, directly predicted the Chinese perceived experience of unusual weather and indirectly predicted their belief certainty and attitudes toward mitigation behavior. However, the effects were relatively small. Possible explanations and implications for environmental education are discussed.

Abstract

Tropical cyclone (TC) wind structure is important for its intensity change and induced damage, but its modulating factors remain to be explored. A heat-engine-based surface wind structure parameter α, reflecting TC’s relative compactness, is introduced and derived based on an entropy budget framework. We found that α is modulated by three key parameters: the thermodynamic efficiency ϵ _PI in potential intensity theory, the Carnot efficiency ϵ _C of the system, and the degree of irreversibility α _irr of the system. A higher α _irr contributes to a larger α and a lower heat engine efficiency. An expression linking TC intensity and compactness also emerges under this framework. Idealized simulations of a typical moist TC (CTL), a dry (DRY) TC, and a moist reversible TC (REV; in which hydrometeors do not fall out) evinced that the significantly higher α _irr in CTL, due to irreversible entropy productions from precipitation dissipation, water vapor diffusion, and irreversible phase changes, contributes to its much larger compactness compared to DRY and REV. The study illustrates the importance of irreversible entropy production processes in modulating TC surface wind field. Simple estimate suggests that α will increase due to a hypothesized increased α _irr with warming because of increased water content. This indicates that TCs will become more compact in a warmer climate.

Abstract

Water resources are an essential part of the ecosystem in the extremely arid northwestern part of China. Previous studies revealed a dry-to-wet climate change since the late 1980s in this region, which suggested a relief from the drought condition. However, the analysis in this study using the updated data shows that the arid situation has continued and even intensified in the past decade. This is reflected by the fact that the low-level air relative humidity and deep soil relative humidity have decreased in the past decade. Examination of the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI) and self-calibrating Palmer drought severity index (sc-PDSI) indicates that the severity and spatial extent of aridity and drought have increased substantially in northwestern China in the most recent decade. It is shown that the drought intensification in northwestern China is mainly caused by the increase of evaporation that results from the continuous rise in temperature, which will pose a continuous threat to the ecosystem and economic development in this region, especially under the background of global warming.

Abstract

The thermal contrast between the Asian continent and the adjacent oceans is the primary aspect of the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) that can be well represented in the sea level pressure (SLP) field. Based on this consideration, a new SLP-based index measuring the intensity of the EAWM is proposed by explicitly taking into account both the east–west and the north–south pressure gradients around East Asia. The new index can delineate the EAWM-related circulation anomalies well, including the deepened (shallow) midtropospheric East Asian trough, sharpened and accelerated (widened and decelerated) upper-tropospheric East Asian jet stream, and enhanced (weakened) lower-tropospheric northerly winds in strong (weak) EAWM winters. Compared with previous indices, the new index has a very good performance describing the winter-mean surface air temperature variations over East Asia, especially for the extreme warm or cold winters. The index is strongly correlated with several atmospheric teleconnections including the Arctic Oscillation, the Eurasian pattern, and the North Pacific Oscillation/western Pacific pattern, implying the possible internal dynamics of the EAWM variability. Meanwhile, the index is significantly linked to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the sea surface temperature (SST) over the tropical Indian Ocean. Moreover, the SST anomalies over the tropical Indian Ocean are more closely related to the index than ENSO as an independent predictor. This adds further knowledge to the prediction potentials of the EAWM apart from ENSO. The predictability of the index is high in the hindcasts of the Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques (CNRM) model from Development of a European Multimodel Ensemble System for Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction (DEMETER). Hence, it would be a good choice to use this index for the monitoring, prediction, and research of the EAWM.

Abstract

The size and structure of tropical cyclones (TCs) are investigated using idealized numerical simulations. Three simulations are conducted: a pure dry TC (DRY), a moist reversible TC (REV) with fallout of hydrometeors in the atmosphere disallowed, and a typical TC (CTL). It was found that the width of the eyewall ascent region and the radius of maximum wind r _m are much larger in DRY and REV than those in CTL. This is closely related to the deep inflow layer (~4 km) in DRY and REV associated with a different entropy restoration mechanism under the subsidence region. With the wide ascents, the close link between r _m and the outer radius in DRY and REV can be well predicted by the Emanuel and Rotunno (ER11) model. The magnitude of subsidence, mainly controlled by the vertical gradient of entropy in the mid- and upper troposphere, is nearly one order greater in DRY and REV than that in CTL. This study demonstrates that the falling nature of hydrometeors poses a strong constraint on the size and structure of real world TCs via the entropy distribution in the subsidence region. The wide ascent, self-stratification in the outflow, and decently reproduced wind profile in DRY and REV suggest that DRY and REV behave like a prototype of the ER11 model with CTL being an extreme type.

Abstract

This study investigates the characteristics and climate impacts of the quasi-biweekly oscillation (QBWO) over the western North Pacific (WNP) in boreal winter based on observational and reanalysis data and numerical experiments with a simplified model. The wintertime convection over the WNP is dominated by significant biweekly variability with a 10–20-day period, which explains about 66% of the intraseasonal variability. Its leading mode on the biweekly time scale is a northwestward-propagating convection dipole over the WNP, which oscillates over a period of about 12 days. When the convection-active center of this QBWO is located to the east of the Philippines, it can generate an anticyclonic vorticity source to the south of Japan via inducing upper-tropospheric divergence and excite a Rossby wave train propagating toward North America along the Pacific rim. The resultant lower-tropospheric circulation facilitates cold advection and leads to cold anomalies over central North America in the following week. This result highlights a cause–effect relationship between the WNP convection and the North American climate on the quasi-biweekly time scale and may provide some prediction potential for the North American climate.

Abstract

Because of the lack of three-dimensional (3D) high-resolution data and the existence of highly nonelliptic flows, few studies have been conducted to investigate the inner-core quasi-balanced characteristics of hurricanes. In this study, a potential vorticity (PV) inversion system is developed, which includes the nonconservative processes of friction, diabatic heating, and water loading. It requires hurricane flows to be statically and inertially stable but allows for the presence of small negative PV. To facilitate the PV inversion with the nonlinear balance (NLB) equation, hurricane flows are decomposed into an axisymmetric, gradient-balanced reference state and asymmetric perturbations. Meanwhile, the nonellipticity of the NLB equation is circumvented by multiplying a small parameter ε and combining it with the PV equation, which effectively reduces the influence of anticyclonic vorticity. A quasi-balanced ω equation in pseudoheight coordinates is derived, which includes the effects of friction and diabatic heating as well as differential vorticity advection and the Laplacians of thermal advection by both nondivergent and divergent winds.

This quasi-balanced PV–ω inversion system is tested with an explicit simulation of Hurricane Andrew (1992) with the finest grid size of 6 km. It is shown that (a) the PV–ω inversion system could recover almost all typical features in a hurricane, and (b) a sizeable portion of the 3D hurricane flows are quasi-balanced, such as the intense rotational winds, organized eyewall updrafts and subsidence in the eye, cyclonic inflow in the boundary layer, and upper-level anticyclonic outflow. It is found, however, that the boundary layer cyclonic inflow and upper-level anticyclonic outflow also contain significant unbalanced components. In particular, a low-level outflow jet near the top of the boundary layer is found to be highly unbalanced (and supergradient). These findings are supported by both locally calculated momentum budgets and globally inverted winds. The results indicate that this PV inversion system could be utilized as a tool to separate the unbalanced from quasi-balanced flows for studies of balanced dynamics and propagating inertial gravity waves in hurricane vortices.

Abstract

Urban areas demonstrate great influence on precipitation, yet the spatial clustering features of precipitation are still unclear over urban areas. This study quantitatively examines the spatial clustering of precipitation intensity in 130 urban-affected regions over mainland China during 2008–15 using a high-resolution merged precipitation product. Results show that the spatial heterogeneity patterns display diverse distribution and vary with precipitation intensity and urban sizes. Extreme and heavy precipitation has higher spatial heterogeneity than light precipitation over the urban-affected regions of grade 1 cities, and their mean Moran’s I are 0.49, 0.47, and 0.37 for the intensity percentiles of ≥95%, 75%–95%, and <75%, respectively. The urban signatures in the spatial clustering of precipitation extremes are observed in 37 cities (28%), mainly occurring in the Haihe River basin, the Yangtze River basin, and the Pearl River basin. The spatial clustering patterns of precipitation extremes are affected by the local dominant synoptic conditions, such as the heavy storms of convective precipitation in Beijing (Moran’s I = 0.47) and the cold frontal system in the Pearl River delta (Moran’s I = 0.78), resulting in large regional variability. The role of urban environments for the spatial clustering is more evident in wetter conditions [e.g., relative humidity (RH) > 75% over Beijing and RH > 85% over the Pearl River delta] and warmer conditions (T > 25°C over Beijing and T > 28°C over the Pearl River delta). This study highlights the urban modification on the spatial clustering of some precipitation extremes, and calls for precautions and adaptation strategies to mitigate the adverse effect of the highly clustered extreme rainfall events.

Abstract

Some dynamic and thermodynamic properties of a convective cell within a squall line that occurred on 6 June 1979 were studied based on dual-Doppler observations. The domain under investigation had a horizontal dimension of 27 km × 27 km with 12 levels in the vertical. The grid spacing used was 1 km. Vertical velocities were computed from the anelastic continuity equation by integrating downward with variational adjustment. Fields of deviation perturbation pressure, density and virtual temperature were recovered from a three-dimensional wind field using the thermodynamic retrieval method. These retrieved fields were then subjected to internal consistency checks to determine the level of confidence.

Our findings demonstrate that thermodynamic retrieval is feasible when random errors inherent in the radial wind components are minimized by proper smoothing. Errors in the computation of vertical velocity can be substantially reduced when a variational approach is used with the anelastic continuity equation applied to the vertically integrated horizontal mass divergence as an integral constraint. Results show that the gust front (GF) is primarily responsible for vigorous convection in the storm. Distinct features of strong wind shear, pressure change and temperature contrast are evident across the GF. The derived pressure and temperature perturbations are closely related to the updraft–downdraft structure. In particular, high pressure forms on the upshear side of an updraft with low pressure on the downshear side. The orientation of maximum pressure gradient across an updraft is in the direction of the environmental shear vector. Strong perturbation temperature gradients occur in the vicinity of an updraft with warning on its upwind side and cooling on its downwind side. The appearance of a downdraft in the immediate vicinity of an updraft is of importance in affecting the magnitude and distribution of pressure and temperature perturbations within the storm.

Abstract

Although the development of supergradient winds is well understood, the importance of supergradient winds in tropical cyclone (TC) intensification is still under debate. One view is that the spinup of the eyewall occurs by the upward advection of high tangential momentum associated with supergradient winds from the boundary layer. The other view argues that the upward advection of supergradient winds by eyewall updrafts results in an outward agradient force, leading to the formation of a shallow outflow layer immediately above the inflow boundary layer. As a result, the spinup of tangential wind in the eyewall by the upward advection of supergradient wind from the boundary layer is largely offset by the spindown of tangential wind due to the outflow resulting from the agradient force. In this study, the net contribution by the upward advection of the supergradient wind component from the boundary layer to the intensification rate and final intensity of a TC are quantified through ensemble sensitivity numerical experiments using an axisymmetric TC model. Results show that consistent with the second view above, the positive upward advection of the supergradient wind component from the boundary layer by eyewall updrafts is largely offset by the negative radial advection due to the outflow resulting from the outward agradient force. As a result, the upward advection of the supergradient wind component contributes little (often less than 4%) to the intensification rate and but it contributes about 10%–15% to the final intensity of the simulated TC due to the enhanced inner-core air–sea thermodynamic disequilibrium.