Premium
A scheme for kinematic estimate of large‐scale vertical motion with an upper‐air network
Author(s) -
Kung E. C.
Publication year - 1972
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.49709841612
Subject(s) - kinematics , divergence (linguistics) , atmosphere (unit) , meteorology , smoothing , wind speed , geodesy , mathematics , geology , physics , classical mechanics , statistics , linguistics , philosophy
A scheme for kinematic estimate of the vertical p‐velocity ω is designed under the presumption that the profiles should converge to a near zero value at the top of the atmosphere without being so required when a sensitive balance between the analysis scheme and data disposition is achieved. The scheme provides a range of eight degrees of optimization in estimating the divergence through the order of polynomial representation of the wind field, the treatment of missing wind data, and the space smoothing of the divergence. The scheme is applied to synoptic wind observations from the upper‐air network over North America. The computed ω profiles and patterns of vertical motion field obtained from those profiles appear to support the proposition. It is indicated that the field of kinematic ω so computed through the depth of atmosphere will be useful in the study of large‐scale atmospheric dynamics.