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Azimuthally averaged structure of Hurricane Edouard (2014) just after peak intensity
Author(s) -
Smith Roger K.,
Montgomery Michael T.,
Braun Scott A.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
quarterly journal of the royal meteorological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.744
H-Index - 143
eISSN - 1477-870X
pISSN - 0035-9009
DOI - 10.1002/qj.3423
Subject(s) - eye , tropical cyclone , storm , dropsonde , vortex , atmospheric sciences , climatology , meteorology , geology , environmental science , physics
Analyses of dropsonde data collected in Hurricane Edouard (2014) just after its mature stage are presented. These data have unprecedentedly high spatial resolution, based on 87 dropsondes released by the unmanned NASA Global Hawk from an altitude of 18 km during the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) field campaign. Attempts are made to relate the analyses of the data to theories of tropical cyclone structure and behaviour. The tangential wind and thermal fields show the classical structure of a warm‐core vortex, in this case with a secondary eyewall feature. Additionally, the equivalent potential temperature field ( θ e ) shows the expected structure with a mid‐tropospheric minimum at outer radii and contours of θ e flaring upwards and outwards at inner radii. With some imagination, these contours are roughly congruent to the surfaces of absolute angular momentum. However, details of the analysed radial velocity field are quite sensitive to the way in which the sonde data are partitioned to produce an azimuthal average. This sensitivity is compounded by an apparent limitation of the assumed steadiness of the storm over the period of data collection.