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Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection

Very sparse data have previously limited observational studies of meteorological processes in the Sahara. We present an observed case of convectively driven water vapor transport crossing the Sahara over 2.5 days in June 2012, from the Sahel in the south to the Atlas in the north. A daily cycle is o...

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Autores principales: Trzeciak, Tomasz M., Garcia‐Carreras, Luis, Marsham, John H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28344367
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL072108
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author Trzeciak, Tomasz M.
Garcia‐Carreras, Luis
Marsham, John H.
author_facet Trzeciak, Tomasz M.
Garcia‐Carreras, Luis
Marsham, John H.
author_sort Trzeciak, Tomasz M.
collection PubMed
description Very sparse data have previously limited observational studies of meteorological processes in the Sahara. We present an observed case of convectively driven water vapor transport crossing the Sahara over 2.5 days in June 2012, from the Sahel in the south to the Atlas in the north. A daily cycle is observed, with deep convection in the evening generating moist cold pools that fed the next day's convection; the convection then generated new cold pools, providing a vertical recycling of moisture. Trajectories driven by analyses were able to capture the direction of the transport but not its full extent, particularly at night when cold pools are most active, and analyses missed much of the water content of cold pools. The results highlight the importance of cold pools for moisture transport, dust and clouds, and demonstrate the need to include these processes in models in order to improve the representation of Saharan atmosphere.
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spelling pubmed-53478752017-03-23 Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection Trzeciak, Tomasz M. Garcia‐Carreras, Luis Marsham, John H. Geophys Res Lett Research Letters Very sparse data have previously limited observational studies of meteorological processes in the Sahara. We present an observed case of convectively driven water vapor transport crossing the Sahara over 2.5 days in June 2012, from the Sahel in the south to the Atlas in the north. A daily cycle is observed, with deep convection in the evening generating moist cold pools that fed the next day's convection; the convection then generated new cold pools, providing a vertical recycling of moisture. Trajectories driven by analyses were able to capture the direction of the transport but not its full extent, particularly at night when cold pools are most active, and analyses missed much of the water content of cold pools. The results highlight the importance of cold pools for moisture transport, dust and clouds, and demonstrate the need to include these processes in models in order to improve the representation of Saharan atmosphere. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2017-02-04 2017-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5347875/ /pubmed/28344367 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL072108 Text en ©2016. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Letters
Trzeciak, Tomasz M.
Garcia‐Carreras, Luis
Marsham, John H.
Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection
title Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection
title_full Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection
title_fullStr Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection
title_full_unstemmed Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection
title_short Cross‐Saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection
title_sort cross‐saharan transport of water vapor via recycled cold pool outflows from moist convection
topic Research Letters
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347875/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28344367
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL072108
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