Phys.org February 19, 2024 Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are filaments of enhanced horizontal moisture transport in the atmosphere. They play a prominent role in the meridional moisture transport and regional weather extremes. But the representations of ARs and their associated precipitation on a global scale remains largely unknown. A team of researchers in the US (UCLA, NCAR, Caltech) developed an AR detection algorithm specifically for satellite observations using moisture and the geostrophic winds derived from 3D geopotential height field from the combined retrievals of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder and the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit on NASA Aqua satellite. The algorithm enabled […]
Category Archives: Atmospheric river
‘Rivers’ in the sky likely to drench East Asia under climate change
Phys.org January 18, 2022 Intense atmospheric rivers (ARs), eddy transports of moisture over the middle latitudes, contributed significantly to the extremely heavy rainfall events over the last decade in parts of East Asia. The extent to which ARs produce extreme rainfall over East Asia in a warmer climate remains unclear. An international team of researchers (Japan, USA – University of North Carolina) evaluated changes in the frequency and intensity of AR-related extreme heavy rainfall under global warming using a set of high-resolution global and regional atmospheric simulations. They found that both the AR-related water vapor transport and rainfall intensify over […]