Identification

Title

Characteristics of gravity waves from convection and implications for their parameterization in global circulation models

Abstract

Characteristic properties of gravity waves from convection over the continental United States are derived from idealized high-resolution numerical simulations. In a unique modeling approach, waves are forced by a realistic thermodynamic source based on observed precipitation data. The square of the precipitation rate and the gravity wave momentum fluxes both show lognormal occurrence distributions, with long tails of extreme events. Convectively generated waves can give forces in the lower stratosphere that at times rival orographic wave forcing. Throughout the stratosphere, zonal forces due to convective wave drag are much stronger than accounted for by current gravity wave drag parameterizations, so their contribution to the summer branch of the stratospheric Brewer-Dobson circulation is in fact much larger than models predict. A comparison of these forces to previous estimates of the total drag implies that convectively generated gravity waves are a primary source of summer-hemisphere stratospheric wave drag. Furthermore, intermittency and strength of the zonal forces due to convective gravity wave drag in the lower stratosphere resemble analysis increments, suggesting that a more realistic representation of these waves may help alleviate model biases on synoptic scales. The properties of radar precipitation and gravity waves seen in this study lead to a proposed change for future parameterization methods that would give more realistic drag forces in the stratosphere without compromising mesospheric gravity wave drag.

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document

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http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d72b90pk

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

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Classification of spatial data and services

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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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publication

effective date

2016-07-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2016 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.

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None

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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

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pointOfContact

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