Friday Feb. 11, 2011
click here to download today's notes in a more printer friendly format

Three songs from KT Tunstall before class this morning ("Ashes", "The Girl and the Ghost", and "Uummannaq Song").  I heard the last song over the Christmas break on the "Fresh Tracks" program on Eugene Public Radio (KLCC).

Here's a quick summary of some of what we did in class on Wednesday.  These two figures show surface winds blowing around surface centers of low and high pressure.




Winds spin counterclockwise and spiral inward around low pressure.  These converging wind motions cause air to rise (and expand and cool) in the center of low pressure.  Convergence is the first of four processes that can cause air to rise (you'll find the three other processes scattered throughout today's notes).  Rising air motions are important because if you cool moist air enough (to its dew point) clouds can form.

3.
The pressure pattern determines the wind direction and wind speed.  Once the winds start to blow they can affect and change the temperature pattern.  The figure below shows the temperature pattern you would expect to see if the wind wasn't blowing at all or if the wind was just blowing straight from west to east.  The bands of different temperature are aligned parallel to the lines of latitude.  Temperature changes from south to north but not from west to east. 


This picture gets a little more interesting if you put centers of high or low pressure in the middle.



The clockwise spinning winds move warm air to the north on the western side of the High.  Cold air moves toward the south on the eastern side of the High.  The diverging winds also move the warm and cold air away from the center of the High.


Counterclockwise winds move cold air toward the south on the west side of the Low.  Warm air advances toward the north on the eastern side of the low.

The converging winds in the case of low pressure will move the air masses of different temperature in toward the center of low pressure and cause them to collide with each other.  The boundaries between these colliding air masses are called fronts.  Fronts are a second way of causing rising air motions (rising air expands and cools, if the air is moist clouds can form). 

Cold air is moving from north toward the south on the western side of the low.  The leading edge of the advancing cold air mass is a cold front.  Cold fronts are drawn in blue on weather maps.  The small triangular symbols on the side of the front identify it as a cold front and show what direction it is moving.  The fronts are like spokes on a wheel.  The "spokes" will spin counterclockwise around the low pressure center (the axle).

A warm front (drawn in red with half circle symbols) is shown on the right hand side of the map at the advancing edge of warm air.  It is also rotating counterclockwise around the Low.

This type of storm system is referred to a middle latitude storm or an extratropical cyclone (extra tropical means outside the tropics, cyclone means winds spinning around low pressure).  These storms form at middle latitudes (roughly 30 to 60 degrees latitude because that is where you get air masses with very different temperatures (cold dry air from high latitude and warmer air from lower latitude).

You mostly just find warm air in the tropics.  Large storms also form there; they're called tropical cyclones or, in our part of the world, hurricanes.  I'm pretty sure I forgot to mention hurricanes in class.

Clouds can form along fronts (often in a fairly narrow band along a cold front and over a larger area ahead of a warm front).  We need to look at the crossectional structure of warm and cold fronts to understand better why this is the case.

The top picture below shows a crossectional view of a cold front





At the top of the figure, cold dense air on the left is advancing into warmer lower density air on the right.  We are looking at the front edge of the cold air mass, note the blunt shape.  The front edge of the advancing cold air "bunches up" because of friction as it moves across the ground.  The warm low density air is lifted out of the way by the cold air.   The warm air is rising. 

The lower figure shows an analogous situation, a big heavy Cadillac plowing into a bunch of Volkswagens.  The VWs are thrown up into the air by the Cadillac.

Here's a crossectional view of a warm front, the structure is a little different.





In the case of a warm front we are looking at the back, trailing edge of cold air (moving slowly to the right).  Note the ramp like shape of the cold air mass.  Warm air overtakes the cold air.  The warm air is still less dense than the cold air, it can't wedge its way underneath the cold air.  Rather the warm air overruns the cold air.  The warm air rises again (more gradually) and clouds form.  The clouds generally are spread out over a larger area than with cold fronts.  The front can advance only as fast as the cooler air moves away to the right.

In the automobile analogy, the VWs are catching a Cadillac.  What happens when they overtake the Cadillac?



The Volkswagens aren't heavy enough to lift the Cadillac.  They run up and over the Cadillac. 

Fronts are a second way of causing air to rise.  Rising air cools and if the warm air is moist and cooled enough, clouds and precipitation can form.  That's why the clouds were drawn in along the fronts in the middle latitude storm picture above.

We watched a couple of short video segments at this point.  The first used colored liquids with slightly different densities (a water/glycerin mixture) to show how a cold air mass can lift a warmer, less dense air mass.  The video segment also tried to show how warm air overruns a receding mass of colder denser air.  The second video was a time lapse movie of an actual cold front that passed through Tucson on Easter Sunday, April 4, in 1999.  It actually snowed for a short time during the passage of the cold front.  Click here to see the cold front video (it may take a minute or two to transfer the data from the server computer in the Atmo. Dept., be patient).  Remember the video shows a time lapse movie of the frontal passage.  The front seems to race through Tucson in the video, it wasn't moving as fast as the video might lead you to believe.  Cold fronts typically move 15 to 25 MPH.

Now let's look at some of the weather changes that precede and follow passage of a cold front

A crossectional view of a cold front is shown below (we've jumped to p. 148a in the photocopied ClassNotes)


Here are some of the specific weather changes
Weather variable
 Behind
 Passing
 Ahead
Temperature
 cool, cold, colder*
warm
Dew Point
 usually much drier*
may be moist (though that is often
not the case here in the desert southwest)
Winds
 northwest
 gusty winds (dusty)
 from the southwest
Clouds, Weather
 clearing
 rain clouds, thunderstorms in
narrow band along the front
(if the warm air mass is moist)
 might see some high clouds
Pressure
 rising
 reaches a minimum
 falling

* the coldest air might follow passage of a cold front by a day or two.  Nighttime temperatures often plummet in the cold dry air behind a cold front.  Note the green (cool), blue (cold), purple (colder) sequence is the picture above behind the cold front

A temperature drop is probably the most obvious change associated with a cold front.  Here is southern Arizona, gusty winds and a wind shift are also often noticeable when a cold front passes.

The pressure changes that precede and follow a cold front are not something we would observe or feel but are very useful when trying to locate a front on a weather map.

In the next figure we started with some weather data plotted on a surface map using the station model notation. 


Before trying to locate a cold front, we needed to draw in a few isobars and map out the pressure pattern.  In some respects fronts are like spokes on a wheel - they rotate counterclockwise around centers of low pressure.  It makes sense to first determine the location of the low pressure center.

Isobars are drawn at 4 mb increments above and below a starting value of 1000 mb.  Some of the allowed values are shown on the right side of the figure (992, 996, 1000, 1004, 1008 etc).  The highest pressure on the map is 1003.0 mb, the lowest is 994.9 mb.  You must choose from the allowed list of isobar values and pick only the values that fall between the high and low pressure values on the map.  Thus we have drawn in  996 mb and 1000 mb isobars.

The next step was to try to locate the warm air mass in the picture.  Temperatures are in the 60s in the lower right portion of the map; this area has been circled in red.

The cold front on the map seems to be properly postioned.  The air ahead of the front is warm, moist, has winds blowing from the S or SW, and the pressure is falling.  These are all things you would expect to find ahead of a cold front.

Clouds and a rain shower were located right near the front which is typically where they are found.

The air behind the front is colder, drier, winds are blowing from the NW, and the pressure is falling.  Note how the cold front is positioned at the leading edge of the cold air mass, not necessarily in front of the coldest air in the cold air mass.

We didn't have time to cover warm fronts.  I'll stick that onto the front of next Monday's notes.  And here's the activity I mentioned in class that will show you how to draw in isobars and locate fronts on your own (really it contains some very detailed directions).  You can either earn some 1S1P pts or some extra credit pts (one or the other not both).

We finished class by looking at another short video segment showing Auguste Piccard and his son Jacques traveling down to 10,000 ft. depth in the ocean.  It was a trial run of a bathyscaph that Auguste Piccard had designed.  Later Jacques and another person would travel to a depth of 35,000 feet.

As long as we're listing weather processes that can cause air to rise we might as well mention the 3rd process.  It's something we've already sort of covered as a matter of fact.  The process illustrated below is called convection.



The 4th process is something called Topographic or Orographic Lifting.
When moving air encounters a mountain it must pass over it. 
You often find clouds and rain on the windward side of the mountain where the air rises (rising air expand and cools; cooling moist air is how you make clouds)
Drier conditions, a rain shadow, is found on the leeward side where the air is sinking (sinking air moves into higher pressure surroundings and warms; that keeps clouds from forming)