Open AccessA study of cloud spirals of tropical cyclones
Author(s) -
Abhijit Lahiri
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
mausam
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.243
H-Index - 12
ISSN - 0252-9416
DOI - 10.54302/mausam.v32i2.3404
Subject(s) - tropical cyclone , streamlines, streaklines, and pathlines , eye , meteorology , mathematics , geology , geometry , physics , mechanics
From examination of a number of tropical cyclones in the vicinity of Miami, Sen and Hiser (1957) found that the cloud spirals of tropical cyclones, in general, fit with equiangular spirals. We have also found the same characteristic to be valid in case of tropical cyclones of Indian seas. Moreover the average trajectories and streamlines drawn by various workers have also been found to closely approximate with equiangular spirals.
In this paper, the general axially symmetric wind field with streamlines as equiangular spirals has been obtained and it has been shown that the ratio of divergence to vorticity equals to the cotangent of the angle of spirals in such cases, Using this result, it has been shown that the rate of generation of latent heat within a tropical cyclone is proportional to the cotangent of the angle of spirals, and certain well known satellite and radar characteristics have been established.