Identification

Title

Recent Advances in the Understanding of Near-Cloud Turbulence

Abstract

Anyone who has flown in a commercial aircraft is familiar with turbulence. Unexpected encounters with turbulence pose a safety risk to airline passengers and crew, can occasionally damage aircraft, and indirectly increase the cost of air travel. Deep convective clouds are one of the most important sources of turbulence. Cloud-induced turbulence can occur both within clouds and in the surrounding clear air. Turbulence associated with but outside of clouds is of particular concern because it is more difficult to discern using standard hazard identification technologies (e.g., satellite and radar) and thus is often the source of unexpected turbulence encounters. Although operational guidelines for avoiding near-cloud turbulence exist, they are in many ways inadequate because they were developed before the governing dynamical processes were understood. Recently, there have been significant advances in the understanding of the dynamics of near-cloud turbulence. Using examples, this article demonstrates how these advances have stemmed from improved turbulence observing and reporting systems, the establishment of archives of turbulence encounters, detailed case studies, and high-resolution numerical simulations. Some of the important phenomena that have recently been identified as contributing to near-cloud turbulence include atmospheric wave breaking, unstable upper-level thunderstorm outflows, shearing instabilities, and cirrus cloud bands. The consequences of these phenomena for developing new en route turbulence avoidance guidelines and forecasting methods are discussed, along with outstanding research questions.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d77s7pf0

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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geoscientificInformation

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title

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reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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date type

publication

effective date

2012-04-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2012 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

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