We show that filamentous Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) over the Northern Atlantic Ocean are closely linked to attracting Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) in the large scale wind field. The detected LCSs represent lines of attraction in the evolving flow with a significant impact on all passive tracers. Using Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponents, we extract LCSs from a two-dimensional flow derived from water vapor flux of atmospheric reanalysis data and compare them to the three-dimensional LCS obtained from the wind flow. We correlate the typical filamentous water vapor patterns of ARs with LCSs and find that LCSs bound the filaments on the back side. Passive advective transport of water vapor in the AR from tropical latitudes is potentially possible.
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Lagrangian coherent structures along atmospheric rivers
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June 2015
Research Article|
June 09 2015
Lagrangian coherent structures along atmospheric rivers
Daniel Garaboa-Paz;
Daniel Garaboa-Paz
a)
1Group of Nonlinear Physics,
University of Santiago de Compostela
, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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Jorge Eiras-Barca;
Jorge Eiras-Barca
1Group of Nonlinear Physics,
University of Santiago de Compostela
, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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Florian Huhn;
Florian Huhn
2
Institute of Mechanical Systems
, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zürich, Leonhardtstrasse 21, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland
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Vicente Pérez-Muñuzuri
Vicente Pérez-Muñuzuri
b)
1Group of Nonlinear Physics,
University of Santiago de Compostela
, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
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a)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
b)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
Chaos 25, 063105 (2015)
Article history
Received:
December 02 2014
Accepted:
April 23 2015
Citation
Daniel Garaboa-Paz, Jorge Eiras-Barca, Florian Huhn, Vicente Pérez-Muñuzuri; Lagrangian coherent structures along atmospheric rivers. Chaos 1 June 2015; 25 (6): 063105. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4919768
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