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Full-Text Articles in Meteorology

Trends In The Ams Education Symposium And Highlights From 2012, Rajul Pandya, Donna Charlevoix, Eugene Cordero, David Smith, Sepi Yalda Dec 2012

Trends In The Ams Education Symposium And Highlights From 2012, Rajul Pandya, Donna Charlevoix, Eugene Cordero, David Smith, Sepi Yalda

Eugene C. Cordero

The Department of Meteorology (now Atmospheric Sciences) at the University of Utah faced reductions in state funding in 2008 that reduced support for nontenured instructors at the same time that the faculty were becoming increasingly successful obtaining federally supported research grants. A faculty retreat and subsequent discussions led to substantive curriculum changes to modernize the curriculum, enhance course offerings for undergraduate and graduate students, and improve the overall efficiency of the academic program. Maintaining discipline standards and existing teaching loads were important constraints on these changes. Key features of the curriculum revisions for undergraduate majors included eliminating a very rigid …


The Weather And Climate Of West Virginia, Kevin Law, H. Michael Mogil Aug 2012

The Weather And Climate Of West Virginia, Kevin Law, H. Michael Mogil

Kevin Law

West Virginia is a geographically small state with a distinctive climate. The article describes the climatological patterns of the state plus describes some historical weather events.


A Statistical Model To Forecast Short-Term Atlantic Hurricane Intensity, Kevin Law, Jay Hobgood Aug 2012

A Statistical Model To Forecast Short-Term Atlantic Hurricane Intensity, Kevin Law, Jay Hobgood

Kevin Law

An alternative 24-h statistical hurricane intensity model is presented and verified for 13 hurricanes during the 2004–05 seasons. The model uses a new method involving a discriminant function analysis (DFA) to select from a collection of multiple regression equations. These equations were developed to predict the future 24-h wind speed increase and the 24-h pressure drop that were constructed from a dataset of 103 hurricanes from 1988 to 2003 that utilized 25 predictors of rapid intensification. The accuracy of the 24-h wind speed increase models was tested and compared with the official National Hurricane Center (NHC) 24-h intensity forecasts, which …


The Impact Of Oceanic Heat Content On The Rapid Intensification Of Atlantic Hurricanes, Kevin Law Aug 2012

The Impact Of Oceanic Heat Content On The Rapid Intensification Of Atlantic Hurricanes, Kevin Law

Kevin Law

With the increased infrastructure and amount of people living along the United States coastline, it is imperative to improve the accuracy of Atlantic hurricane intensity forecasts. Over the last 10 years, there have been many Atlantic hurricanes, including Hurricanes Katrina and Charley that surprised many forecasters with their rapid intensification and power. The rapid intensification of tropical cyclones is the most serious aspect, when it comes to forecasting. It is generally accepted that sufficient surface ocean temperatures (approximately 26°C) are needed to produce and sustain tropical cyclone formation. However, the sea-surface temperature (SST) has shown not to be critical in …


Reproduction Of Twentieth Century Intradecadal To Multidecadal Surface Temperature Variability In Radiatively Forced Coupled Climate Models, Patrick T. Brown, Eugene C. Cordero, Steven A. Mauget Jun 2012

Reproduction Of Twentieth Century Intradecadal To Multidecadal Surface Temperature Variability In Radiatively Forced Coupled Climate Models, Patrick T. Brown, Eugene C. Cordero, Steven A. Mauget

Eugene C. Cordero

[1] Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3 simulations that included time-varying radiative forcings were ranked according to their ability to consistently reproduce twentieth century intradecadal to multidecadal (IMD) surface temperature variability at the 5° by 5° spatial scale. IMD variability was identified using the running Mann-Whitney Z method. Model rankings were given context by comparing the IMD variability in preindustrial control runs to observations and by contrasting the IMD variability among the ensemble members within each model. These experiments confirmed that the inclusion of time-varying external forcings brought simulations into closer agreement with observations. Additionally, they illustrated that the magnitude of …


Evaluating Modeled Intra- To Multidecadal Climate Variability Using Running Mann–Whitney Z Statistics, Steven A. Mauget, Eugene C. Cordero, Patrick T. Brown Mar 2012

Evaluating Modeled Intra- To Multidecadal Climate Variability Using Running Mann–Whitney Z Statistics, Steven A. Mauget, Eugene C. Cordero, Patrick T. Brown

Eugene C. Cordero

An analysis method previously used to detect observed intra- to multidecadal (IMD) climate regimes was adapted to compare observed and modeled IMD climate variations. Pending the availability of the more appropriate phase 5 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP-5) simulations, the method is demonstrated using CMIP-3 model simulations. Although the CMIP-3 experimental design will almost certainly prevent these model runs from reproducing features of historical IMD climate variability, these simulations allow for the demonstration of the method and illustrate how the models and observations disagree. This method samples a time series’s data rankings over moving time windows, converts those ranking sets …


Spatio-Temporal Variability Of Daily And Weekly Precipitation Extremes In South America, Shiraj Khan, Gabriel Kuhn, Auroop Ganguly, David Erickson Iii, George Ostrouchov Jan 2012

Spatio-Temporal Variability Of Daily And Weekly Precipitation Extremes In South America, Shiraj Khan, Gabriel Kuhn, Auroop Ganguly, David Erickson Iii, George Ostrouchov

Auroop R. Ganguly

Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation extremes are investigated by utilizing daily observations available at 2.5° gridded fields in South America for the period 1940–2004. All 65 a of data from 1940–2004 are analyzed for spatial variability. The temporal variability is investigated at each spatial grid by utilizing 25-a moving windows from 1965–2004 and visualized through plots of the slope of the regression line in addition to its quality measure (R²). The Poisson-generalized Pareto (Poisson-GP) model, which is a peaks over threshold (POT) approach, is applied to weekly precipitation maxima residuals based on the 95%-quantile threshold, while daily data are …