'The Comparison Between Various Soil Moisture Datasets in Relation to Tornadogenesis Locations'

Conference: AMS Student Conference

Session: Applied Meteorology and Climatology

The Comparison Between Various Soil Moisture Datasets in Relation to Tornadogenesis Locations

Authors: Rachel Webb, Steven Quiring, Jana Houser

Affiliation: The Ohio State University

Soil moisture is currently being looked at as one of the parameters for tornadoes to form. Soil moisture is important because it supplies water to the surrounding atmosphere through the latent heat flux process as well as indirectly through the evapotranspiration process. One thing that has yet to be researched is looking at different soil moisture datasets to evaluate soil moisture conditions at genesis locations. Specifically comparing and contrasting the three soil moisture data sets already out there to highlight the frequency of tornadoes at deeper soil moisture depths. To address this question, we will examine the relationship between two out of the three soil moisture datasets, the SMAP and NLDAS, and their soil moisture values at the 5, 20, and 50 cm depths. In our comparison we hope to find that in locations where the soil is more moist, the 20 and 50 cm values, will highlight that tornadoes have occurred more frequently in these locations as compared to the locations where the soil is less moist or in the 5 cm range. We will use Python to analyze and highlight these comparisons and draw our conclusions. This study aims to highlight the similarities or differences in the soil moisture datasets when it comes to tornadogenesis locations, as well as potentially paving the way for more research to be done as to how these soil moisture datasets can help in predicting when a tornado will occur.