The 1987 Australian monsoon was observed with satellites, rawinsondes, radar and aircraft. These data are presented, with theory filling the gaps, in illustration of its dynamics.The engine of the monsoon is its embedded mesoscale convective systems (MCSs). Ten MCSs were explored with airborne Doppler radar. They all exhibited ...

Zonal winds reach in excess of 100 m/s in the middle atmosphere of Venus; the cloud-level atmosphere takes little more than 4 days to complete one rotation, while the solid planet below has a 243-day rotation period. This phenomenon, known as superrotation, is the central problem of the Venus atmosphere. The question we address ...

This dissertation addresses several aspects of synoptic-scale incursions of cold air (cold surges) propagating equatorward along the east side of the Andes cordillera in South America. Similar cold surges are also a well documented feature of the synoptic climatology of southeast Asia (to the east of the Himalayan Plateau) ...

The two-day wave is observed in the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) temperature and water vapor data. During a 3-year period (Dec. 1991-Sep. 1994), the wave signature is prominent semiannually after each solstice and is comprised of a zonal wavenumber 3 component with ${\sim}2.0$-day ...

Stratified flow with uniform basic wind and stability past long three-dimensional (3d) ridges is studied in the absence of surface friction and planetary rotation. The dominant control parameters for this problem are the nondimensional mountain height e=Nh0U0 and the horizontal aspect ratio beta (i.e., ratio of cross-stream ...

This dissertation investigates western Washington Cascade windstorms by utilizing various data sources such as conventional synoptic observations, profilers on both sides of the Cascade Mountains, a WSR-88D Doppler radar located in northern Puget Sound, and non-hydrostatic model simulations down to 1 km resolution. First, the ...

The nonhydrostatic version of the Penn State University (PSU)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) mesoscale model MM5 is used to investigate the mechanisms responsible for the superclustering of tropical deep convection. In particular, we are interested in whether mesoscale cloud clusters and super cloud clusters ...

The oil fields in Kuwait were the scene of a massive conflagration during much of 1991 that was started by Iraqi forces during the Gulf War. At this time, approximately 4 to 5 million barrels of oil were burning each day. The climatic impacts of the fires were limited by the fact that the smoke was generally confined to the ...

Low-frequency variability in the Northern Hemisphere wintertime 500 hPa height field has been investigated. The Pacific/North American pattern and the North Atlantic Oscillation stand out above the background continuum of variability in rotated EOF analysis based on the temporal covariance matrix. It is shown that these spatial ...

Observing the range of spatial scales important in thunderstorm electrification and subsequent lightning development is huge and would be an impossible task. The charge transfer processes within clouds takes place during collisions of particles with diameters on the order of 10-1000 $\mu$m, whereas the distance between the ...