6. Weather analysis#

Radiosounding
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Here you will find the corresponding lecture slides.

Exercises

Exercise 1: Here are a few practice exercises decoding station weather plots.

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Exercise 2: Search the web for maps that show where weather observations are made today (or recently).

Exercise 3: Search the web for satellite loops that cover your location. Compare these images with the weather you see out the window, and make a short-term forecast based on the satellite loop.

Exercise 4: Search the web to find the most recent set of visible, IR, and water-vapor images that covers your area. Download these images; label cloud areas as (a), (b), etc.; and interpret the clouds in those images. For the cloud area directly over you, compare you satellite interpretation with the view out your window.

Exercise 5: What shade of grey would the following clouds appear in visible, IR, and water-vapor satellite images, and what pattern or shape would they have in the images?

  • jet contrail

  • two cloud layers: cirrus & altostratus

  • two cloud layers: cirrus & stratus

  • three cloud layers: cirrus, altostratus, stratus e. two cloud layers: fog and altostratus

  • altocumulus standing lenticular

  • altocumulus castellanus

  • billow clouds

  • fumulus

  • volcanic ash clouds

Exercise 6: Monitor the weather maps on the web every day for a week or more over Europe. Identify the low centers and fronts. Discuss the variety of arrangements of warm, cold, and occluded front that you observe.

Exercise 7: Use a sequence of weather maps every 6 or 12 h for a week, where each map is spanning a large portion of the globe. Finde one or more locations that exhibits the following mechanism for formation of a surface high pressure:

  • global circulation

  • monsoon

  • Rossby wave

  • thunderstorm

  • topographic

Exercise 8: For a weather situation of relatively zonal flow from west to east over Europe, access upper air soundings for weather stations in a line more-or-less along the wind direction. Show how the sounding evolves as the air flows over the continent.

Exercise 9: Same as previous exercise, but identify the frontal inversions (or frontal stable layers) aloft in the sounding.

Exercise 10: Identify a region with high CAPE and look at the nearest station with an upper air sounding. Create a skew-T diagram and determine the LCL, LFC and CAPE.

Exercise 11: Why are there no extratropical cyclone tracks from east to west?

Exercise 12: Search the internet for satellite images of an air mass thunderstorm. Do this for visible, IR, and water vapor channels. Discuss the features of you resulting images.