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Atmospheric Scale Interaction On Wintertime Intermountain West Low-Level Inversions, Robert R. Gillies, Shih-Yu (Simon) Wang, Marty R. Booth

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Persistent winter inversions result in poor air quality in the Intermountain West of the United States. Although the onset of an inversion is relatively easy to predict, the duration and the subsequent breakup of a persistent inversion event remains a forecasting challenge. For this reason and for this region, historic soundings were analyzed for Salt Lake City, Utah, with reanalysis and station data to investigate how persistent inversion events are modulated by synoptic and intraseasonal variabilities. The results point to a close linkage between persistent inversions and the dominant intraseasonal (30 day) mode that characterizes the winter circulation regime over …