Identification

Title

The spatiotemporal characteristics of near-surface water vapor in a coastal region revealed from radar-derived refractivity

Abstract

The radar-retrieved refractivity fields provide detailed depictions of the near-surface moisture distribution at the meso-gamma scale. This study represents a novel application of the refractivity fields by examining the spatiotemporal characteristics of moisture variability in a summertime coastal region in Taiwan over 4 weeks. The physiography in Taiwan lends itself to a variety of flow features and corresponding moisture behavior, which has not been well studied. Highresolution refractivity analyses demonstrate how a highly variable moisture field is related to the complex interaction between the synoptic-scale winds, diurnal local circulations, terrain, storms, and heterogeneous land use. On average, higher refractivity (water vapor) is observed along the coastline and refractivity decreases inland toward the foothills. Under weak synoptic forcing conditions, the daytime refractivity field develops differently under local surface wind directions determined by the synoptic-scale prevailing wind and the sea-breeze fronts. High moisture penetrates inland toward the foothills with southwesterly winds, but it stalls along the coastline with southerly and northwesterly winds. The moisture distribution may further affect the occurrence of the inland afternoon storms. During the nighttime, the dry downslope wind decreases the moisture from the foothills toward the coast and forms a refractivity gradient perpendicular to the meridionally oriented mountains. Furthermore, the refractivity fields illustrate higher-resolution moisture distribution over surface station point measurements by showing the lagged daytime sea-breeze front between the urban and rural areas and the detailed nighttime heterogeneous moisture distribution related to land-use and rivers.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7xk8k3s

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2021-09-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

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

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact