Tornado Proximity Soundings

Beebe, Robert G.

doi:10.1175/1520-0477-39.4.195

Cited by 45 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 3 publications

(4 reference statements)

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“…Rasmussen and Blanchard (1998) define a convective event as at least 10 cloud-toground lightning flashes. Of course, spatial and temporal variability within the convective environment ensures that finding a representative proximity sounding is not trivial (e.g., Beebe 1958;Darkow 1969). To understand the dynamics within convective episodes, upper-air sampling is necessary; however, radiosonde measurements do not exist at every observation station.…”

Section: A Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface-Based Convective Potential in the Contiguous United States in a Business-as-Usual Future Climate

Klooster

Roebber

2009

Journal of Climate

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To date, neither observational studies nor direct climate model simulations have been able to document trends in the frequency or severity of deep moist convection associated with global climate change. The lack of such evidence is not unexpected as the observational record is insufficiently long and computational limitations prevent modeling at the scales necessary to simulate explicitly such phenomena. Nonetheless, severe deep moist convection represents an important aspect of regional climate, particularly in the central United States, where damage, injuries, and fatalities are a frequent result of such phenomena. Accordingly, any comprehensive assessment of the regional effects of climate change must account for these effects.In this work, the authors present a ''perfect prog'' approach to estimating the potential for surface-based convective initiation and severity based upon the large-scale variables well resolved by climate model simulations. This approach allows for the development of a stable estimation scheme that can be applied to any climate model simulation, presently and into the future. The scheme is applied for the contiguous United States using the output from the Parallel Climate Model, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change third assessment A2 (business as usual) as input. For this run, relative to interannual variability, the potential frequency of deep moist convection does not change, but the potential for severe convection is found to increase east of the Rocky Mountains and most notably in the ''tornado alley'' region of the U.S. Midwest. This increase in severe potential is mostly tied to increases in thermodynamic instability as a result of ongoing warm season surface warming and moistening. Finally, approaches toward improving such estimation methods are briefly discussed.

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Section: A Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface-Based Convective Potential in the Contiguous United States in a Business-as-Usual Future Climate

Klooster

Roebber

2009

Journal of Climate

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“…There is a long history of attempts to develop relationships between large-scale environmental conditions and severe thunderstorms and tornadoes (e.g., Beebe 1955Beebe , 1958Brooks et al 1994;Rasmussen and Blanchard 1998). The primary motivation for these studies has been to improve forecasting.…”

Section: Underlying Problems and Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The spatial distribution of severe convective storms and an analysis of their secular changes

Brooks¹,

Dotzek²

2008

Climate Extremes and Society

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Severe convective storms are responsible for billions of US dollars in damage each year around the world. They form an important part of the climate system by redistributing heat, moisture, and trace gases, as well as producing large quantities of precipitation. Reporting of severe convection varies from country to country, however, so that determining their distribution from the reports alone is difficult, at best. Evidence does exist that the intensity of some events, particularly tornadoes, follows similar distributions in different locations, making it possible to build statistical models of occurrence. Remotely-sensed observations provide some insight, but the relationship between the observable parameters and the actual events of interest limits the quality of the estimate. Another approach is to use observations of the larger-scale environments. As stated, the relationship between the observation and the event limits the estimate, but global coverage is possible. Time series of the favorable environments can also be developed from such data. In order to improve the estimates, the most pressing need is better observational data of events. Very few countries have formal systems for collection of severe thunderstorm reports. A new effort from a consortium of researchers in Europe to develop a continental-wide database offers the possibility of a significant improvement in data in that part of the world.

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“…Proximity sounding studies have been used for many decades to examine severe storm environments (e.g., Showalter and Fulks 1943;Fawbush andMiller 1952, 1954;Beebe 1958;Darkow 1969;Maddox 1976;Davies and Johns 1993;Brooks et al 1994;Rasmussen and Blanchard 1998;Davies 2004;Thompson et al 2007). In this approach, distributions of severe weather parameters are compiled from soundings that occur within spatial and temporal proximity to particular events (e.g., tornadoes, $2-in.-diameter hail).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the Impacts of Proximity Sounding Criteria on the Climatology of Significant Tornado Environments

Potvin

Elmore

Weiss³

2010

Weather and Forecasting

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Proximity sounding studies typically seek to optimize several trade-offs that involve somewhat arbitrary definitions of how to define a ''proximity sounding.'' More restrictive proximity criteria, which presumably produce results that are more characteristic of the near-storm environment, typically result in smaller sample sizes that can reduce the statistical significance of the results. Conversely, the use of broad proximity criteria will typically increase the sample size and the apparent robustness of the statistical analysis, but the sounding data may not necessarily be representative of near-storm environments, given the presence of mesoscale variability in the atmosphere. Previous investigations have used a wide range of spatial and temporal proximity criteria to analyze severe storm environments. However, the sensitivity of storm environment climatologies to the proximity definition has not yet been rigorously examined.In this study, a very large set (;1200) of proximity soundings associated with significant tornado reports is used to generate distributions of several parameters typically used to characterize severe weather environments. Statistical tests are used to assess the sensitivity of the parameter distributions to the proximity criteria.The results indicate that while soundings collected too far in space and time from significant tornadoes tend to be more representative of the larger-scale environment than of the storm environment, soundings collected too close to the tornado also tend to be less representative due to the convective feedback process. The storm environment itself is thus optimally sampled at an intermediate spatiotemporal range referred to here as the Goldilocks zone. Implications of these results for future proximity sounding studies are discussed.

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Tornado Proximity Soundings

Cited by 45 publications

References 3 publications

Surface-Based Convective Potential in the Contiguous United States in a Business-as-Usual Future Climate

Surface-Based Convective Potential in the Contiguous United States in a Business-as-Usual Future Climate

The spatial distribution of severe convective storms and an analysis of their secular changes

Assessing the Impacts of Proximity Sounding Criteria on the Climatology of Significant Tornado Environments

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