Identification

Title

The role of vertical shear on aviation turbulence within cirrus bands of a simulated western Pacific cyclone

Abstract

At 0300 UTC 9 September 2010, commercial aircraft traveling between Tokyo and Hawaii encountered regions of moderate and severe intensity turbulence at about 12-km elevation in or just above banded structures in the cirrus anvil associated with an oceanic cyclone located off the east coast of Japan. The generation mechanisms of the cirrus bands and turbulence are investigated using the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting Model with five nested domains having a finest horizontal grid spacing of 370 m. The simulation reproduces the satellite-observed patterns of cloud brightness, including the bands, and suggests that synoptic-scale vertical shear within the anvil cloud layer and radiative effects, including longwave cooling at cloud top and warming at cloud base, act together to produce banded structures within the southern edge of the cirrus cloud shield. The character of the bands within the nearly neutral or convectively unstable layer of the cirrus shield is similar to boundary layer rolls in that the vertical wind shear vectors are nearly parallel to the cirrus bands. The strong vertical shear aligned with the banded convection leads to flow deformations and mixing near the cloud top, resulting in localized moderate and severe turbulence. The estimated maximum value of the cube root of eddy dissipation rate within the bands is ~0.7 m²/³ s⁻¹, consistent with severe turbulence levels experienced by large aircraft.

Resource type

document

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http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7ks6shv

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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publication

effective date

2014-08-01T00:00:00Z

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Copyright 2014 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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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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