TY - JOUR
T1 - Polarimetric signatures in landfalling tropical cyclones
AU - Homeyer, Cameron R.
AU - Fierro, Alexandre O.
AU - Schenkel, Benjamin A.
AU - Didlake, Anthony C.
AU - Mcfarquhar, Greg M.
AU - Hu, Jiaxi
AU - Ryzhkov, Alexander V.
AU - Basara, Jeffrey B.
AU - Murphy, Amanda M.
AU - Zawislak, And Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. We thank the anonymous reviewers for providing thoughtful comments that helped improve the manuscript. All graphics in this paper were designed to be equally interpretable for individuals with full color vision and individuals with color vision deficiency. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant ICER-1663840 and by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under Award DE-SC0014295. Auxiliary funding was provided by NOAA/Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research under NOAA–University of Oklahoma Cooperative Agreement NA11OAR4320072, U.S. Department of Commerce. Development of the dropsonde dataset is supported by NASA Earth Science Grant 80NSSC19K0012 under the Weather and Dynamics program. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the U.S. government. Neither the U.S. government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the U.S. government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the U.S. government or any agency thereof.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Meteorological Society. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - Polarimetric radar observations from theNEXRADWSR-88D operational radar network in the contiguous United States, routinely available since 2013, are used to reveal three prominent microphysical signatures in landfalling tropical cyclones: 1) hydrometeor size sorting within the eyewall convection, 2) vertical displacement of the melting layer within the inner core, and 3) dendritic growth layers within stratiform regions of the inner core. Size sorting signatures within eyewall convection are observed with greater frequency and prominence in more intense hurricanes, and are observed predominantly within the deep-layer environmental wind shear vector-relative quadrants that harbor the greatest frequency of deep convection (i.e., downshear and left-of-shear). Melting-layer displacements are shown that exceed 1 km in altitude compared to melting-layer altitudes in outer rainbands and are complemented by analyses of archived dropsonde data. Dendritic growth and attendant snow aggregation signatures in the inner core are found to occur more often when echo-top altitudes are low (#10 km MSL), nearer the 2158C isotherm commonly associated with dendritic growth. These signatures, uniquely observed by polarimetric radar, provide greater insight into the physical structure and thermodynamic characteristics of tropical cyclones, which are important for improving rainfall estimation and the representation of tropical cyclones in numerical models.
AB - Polarimetric radar observations from theNEXRADWSR-88D operational radar network in the contiguous United States, routinely available since 2013, are used to reveal three prominent microphysical signatures in landfalling tropical cyclones: 1) hydrometeor size sorting within the eyewall convection, 2) vertical displacement of the melting layer within the inner core, and 3) dendritic growth layers within stratiform regions of the inner core. Size sorting signatures within eyewall convection are observed with greater frequency and prominence in more intense hurricanes, and are observed predominantly within the deep-layer environmental wind shear vector-relative quadrants that harbor the greatest frequency of deep convection (i.e., downshear and left-of-shear). Melting-layer displacements are shown that exceed 1 km in altitude compared to melting-layer altitudes in outer rainbands and are complemented by analyses of archived dropsonde data. Dendritic growth and attendant snow aggregation signatures in the inner core are found to occur more often when echo-top altitudes are low (#10 km MSL), nearer the 2158C isotherm commonly associated with dendritic growth. These signatures, uniquely observed by polarimetric radar, provide greater insight into the physical structure and thermodynamic characteristics of tropical cyclones, which are important for improving rainfall estimation and the representation of tropical cyclones in numerical models.
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U2 - 10.1175/MWR-D-20-0111.1
DO - 10.1175/MWR-D-20-0111.1
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85099880177
SN - 0027-0644
VL - 149
SP - 131
EP - 154
JO - Monthly Weather Review
JF - Monthly Weather Review
IS - 1
ER -