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A case study of a subsynoptic disturbance in a polar outbreak
Author(s) -
Oerlemans J.
Publication year - 1980
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.49710644806
Subject(s) - disturbance (geology) , trough (economics) , environmental science , climatology , polar , precipitation , outbreak , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , geology , geography , physics , geomorphology , medicine , virology , astronomy , economics , macroeconomics
A subsynoptic disturbance, occurring in an outbreak of polar air over northwestern Europe, is studied by using routine observational data. The disturbance showed a characteristic length scale of about 150km, a time scale of 4 hours, caused a surface pressure drop of only 1 mb, but brought up to 20 mm of precipitation in the coastal region of the Netherlands. The observational analysis suggests that the disturbance was a warm‐core system driven by latent heat release and triggered by forced lifting along the coastline, which activated a weak trough filled with potentially unstable air.