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ATMOSPHERIC MOISTURE BUDGET DURING A BANGLADESH FLOOD EVENT
Author(s) -
KRISHNAMURTI T. N.,
BEDI H. S.,
OOSTERHOF D. K.,
ROHALY G. D.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
international journal of climatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.58
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-0088
pISSN - 0899-8418
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0088(199607)16:7<791::aid-joc49>3.0.co;2-a
Subject(s) - initialization , environmental science , climatology , moisture , flood myth , flooding (psychology) , precipitation , climate model , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , climate change , geography , geology , psychology , oceanography , archaeology , computer science , psychotherapist , programming language
Using two features of high‐resolution global modelling, i.e. physical initialization and residue free moisture budgets we have examined a flooding episode over Bangladesh. This study exploits the nowcasting capability of the high‐resolution model initialization procedure. An interesting outcome, of averaging daily computations for an entire month, was that the atmospheric moisture budget over Bangladesh was not revealing the nature of the flooding event. This resulted in a divergence of moisture flux, a loss of column moisture and evaporation exceeding precipitation over a computational volume enclosing the flood area. The same type of results were obtained when monthly mean data were used. The most meaningful interpretations were only possible when the time averaging of the budget was performed for the duration of the heavy rain period. The nature of the floods is rather episodic and some of these, such as the one illustrated here, lasted for a short duration yet produced a drastic rise of surface water. Averaging periods for atmospheric moisture budgets for such events requires more care than simply resorting to month‐ or season‐long periods.