Water-Vapor Transfer Over the North American Continent

Benton, George S.; Estoque, Mariano A.

doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1954)011<0462:wvtotn>2.0.co;2

Cited by 136 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…While many studies have examined specific processes associated with the LLJ (Blackadar 1957;Wexler 1961;Holton 1967), such as its nocturnal peak in diurnal wind speed oscillation, as well as precipitation, the jet is a part of the seasonal circulation shaped primarily by the orographic configuration in North America, particularly the Rocky Mountain Plateau (e.g., Wexler 1961). An important climatic role of the LLJ is transporting moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to the central and eastern United States (Benton and Estoque 1954;Rasmusson 1967;Helfand and Schubert 1995;Byerle and Paegle 2003). Because the moisture is essential for development of precipitation, even though additional dynamic processes are required for the latter to happen (Veres and Hu 2013), correctly describing the LLJ and its seasonal cycle is critical for simulating and predicting warm season precipitation and climate in central North America.…”

Section: E Great Plains Low-level Jetmentioning

confidence: 99%

North American Climate in CMIP5 Experiments. Part I: Evaluation of Historical Simulations of Continental and Regional Climatology

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This is the first part of a three-part paper on North American climate in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) that evaluates the historical simulations of continental and regional climatology with a focus on a core set of 17 models. The authors evaluate the models for a set of basic surface climate and hydrological variables and their extremes for the continent. This is supplemented by evaluations for selected regional climate processes relevant to North American climate, including cool season western Atlantic cyclones, the North American monsoon, the U.S. Great Plains low-level jet, and Arctic sea ice. In general, the multimodel ensemble mean represents the observed spatial patterns of basic climate and hydrological variables but with large variability across models and regions in the magnitude and sign of errors. No single model stands out as being particularly better or worse across all analyses, although some models consistently outperform the others for certain variables across most regions and seasons and higher-resolution models tend to perform better for regional processes. The CMIP5 multimodel ensemble shows a slight improvement relative to CMIP3 models in representing basic climate variables, in terms of the mean and spread, although performance has decreased for some models. Improvements in CMIP5 model performance are noticeable for some regional climate processes analyzed, such as the timing of the North American monsoon. The results of this paper have implications for the robustness of future projections of climate and its associated impacts, which are examined in the third part of the paper.

show abstract

Section: E Great Plains Low-level Jetmentioning

confidence: 99%

North American Climate in CMIP5 Experiments. Part I: Evaluation of Historical Simulations of Continental and Regional Climatology

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the Mississippi basin, the evaporation was less than 10 % of the total precipitation (Benton and Estoque, 1954). An investigation of the summer moisture budgets in central North America in 1979 found that the main source of daytime precipitation was local evaporation (Zangvil et al 1993).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in precipitation recycling over arid regions in the Northern Hemisphere

Wang

2016

Theor Appl Climatol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Changes of precipitation recycling (PR) in Northern Hemisphere from 1981 to 2010 are investigated using a water recycling model. The temporal and spatial characteristics of recycling in arid regions are analyzed. The results show that the regional precipitation recycling ratio (PRR) in arid regions is larger than in wet regions. PRR in arid regions has obvious seasonal variation, ranging from more than 25 % to less than 1 %. Furthermore, in arid regions, PRR is significantly negatively correlated with precipitation (correlation coefficient r = −0.5, exceeding the 99 % significance level). Moreover, the trend of PRR is related to changes in precipitation in two ways. PRR decreases with increasing precipitation in North Africa, which implies that less locally evaporated vapor converts into actual precipitation. However, in Asian arid regions, the PRR increases as precipitation reduces, which implies that more locally evaporated vapor converts into rainfall. Further, as PRR mainly depends on evapotranspiration, the PRR trend in Asian arid regions develops as temperature increases and more evaporated vapor enters the atmosphere to offset the reduced rainfall.

show abstract

“…These include: (1) surfice fluxes of sensible and latent heat over land (Wallace and Hobbs 1977); (2) horizontal winds (Roll 1965, Bonner 1968, Wallace and Todd 1974; (3) large scale horizontal moisture fluxes (Benton andEstoque 1954, Rasmusson 1968); (4) large scale mass divergence and vertical motion (Nitta and Esbensen 1974, McBride and Gray 1980, Sui et al 1997; ( 5 ) surface pressure (Haurwitz and Cowley 1973); (6) cloudiness (Lavoie 1963, Short and Wallace 1980, Meisner and Arkin 1987, Warren et al 1986); (7) satellite infrared (IR) fluxes (Reed and Jaffe 1981, Murakami 1983, Fu et al 1990, Janowiak et al 1994, Faysash and Smith 2000; and (8) outgoing longwave radiation (Duvel andKandel 1985, Liebmann andGruber 1988). All these past studies testify, in some fashion, to the meteorol-ogical influence of diurnally regulated solar or diabatic heating on either surface or atmospheric*processes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanisms for Diurnal Variability of Global Tropical Rainfall Observed from TRMM

2006

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The behavior and various controls of diurnal variability in tropical–subtropical rainfall are investigated using Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation measurements retrieved from the three level-2 TRMM standard profile algorithms for the 1998 annual cycle. Results show that diurnal variability characteristics of precipitation are consistent for all three algorithms, providing assurance that TRMM retrievals are producing consistent estimates of rainfall variability. As anticipated, most ocean areas exhibit more rainfall at night, while over most land areas, rainfall peaks during daytime; however, important exceptions are noted. The dominant feature of the oceanic diurnal cycle is a rainfall maximum in late-evening–early-morning (LE–EM) hours, while over land the dominant maximum occurs in the mid- to late afternoon (MLA). In conjunction with these maxima are pronounced seasonal variations of the diurnal amplitudes. Amplitude analysis shows that the diurnal pattern and its seasonal evolution are closely related to the rainfall accumulation pattern and its seasonal evolution. In addition, the horizontal distribution of diurnal variability indicates that for oceanic rainfall, there is a secondary MLA maximum coexisting with the LE–EM maximum at latitudes dominated by large-scale convergence and deep convection. Analogously, there is a preponderancy for an LE–EM maximum over land coexisting with the stronger MLA maximum, although it is not evident that this secondary continental feature is closely associated with the large-scale circulation. Neither of the secondary maxima exhibit phase behavior that can be considered semidiurnal in nature. Diurnal rainfall variability over the ocean associated with large-scale convection is clearly an integral component of the general circulation. Phase analysis reveals differences in regional and seasonal features of the diurnal cycle, indicating that underlying forcing mechanisms differ from place to place. This is underscored by the appearance of secondary ocean maxima in the presence of large-scale convection, along with other important features. Among these, there are clear-cut differences between the diurnal variability of seasonal rainfall over the mid-Pacific and Indian Ocean Basins. The mid-Pacific exhibits double maxima in spring and winter but only LE–EM maxima in summer and autumn, while the Indian Ocean exhibits double maxima in spring and summer and only an LE–EM maximum in autumn and winter. There are also evident daytime maxima within the major large-scale marine stratocumulus regions off the west coasts of continents. The study concludes with a discussion concerning how the observational evidence either supports or repudiates possible forcing mechanisms that have been suggested to explain diurnal rainfall variability.

show abstract

Water-Vapor Transfer Over the North American Continent

Cited by 136 publications

References 0 publications

North American Climate in CMIP5 Experiments. Part I: Evaluation of Historical Simulations of Continental and Regional Climatology

North American Climate in CMIP5 Experiments. Part I: Evaluation of Historical Simulations of Continental and Regional Climatology

Changes in precipitation recycling over arid regions in the Northern Hemisphere

Mechanisms for Diurnal Variability of Global Tropical Rainfall Observed from TRMM

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About