Monday, 11 August 2003: 11:15 AM
Mobile Doppler radar observations of a front during IHOP
Poster PDF
(2.9 MB)
Four mobile Doppler radars collected data along a front on 3 June 2002
during a convection initiation intercept. The dataset spans nearly 7
continuous hours, affording the opportunity for a detailed study of the
relationships between the kinematic and thermodynamic characteristics of
the front. Convection failed to be initiated along the front, which was
observed initially as a slowly moving cold front, then as a stationary front,
and finally as a warm front. The paper will discuss (1) the characteristics
of the front and/or mesoscale environment that precluded convection
initiation; (2) the effects of inflections in the frontal zone on vertical
motion, water vapor mixing ratio, and virtual potential temperature; (3)
baroclinity changes along the front as a function of time, and kinematic
changes associated with those baroclinity changes; (4) the horizontal
vorticity budget along the front. We also will discuss the implications of
the above findings for convection initiation in general, as well as the issue
of how the appearance of fronts, when viewed at such a high resolution,
differs from conceptual models of fronts.
Supplementary URL: