The DOI matches its Crossref record; 28 of the 28 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How Do Atmospheric Rivers Form?
Open accessAbstract
The term “atmospheric river” is used to describe corridors of strong water vapor transport in the troposphere. Filaments of enhanced water vapor, commonly observed in satellite imagery extending from the subtropics to the extratropics, are routinely used as a proxy for identifying these regions of strong water vapor transport. The precipitation associated with these filaments of enhanced water vapor can lead to high-impact flooding events. However, there remains some debate as to how these filaments form. In this paper, the authors analyze the transport of water vapor within a climatology of wintertime North Atlantic extratropical cyclones. Results show that atmospheric rivers are formed by the cold front that sweeps up water vapor in the warm sector as it catches up with the warm front. This causes a narrow band of high water vapor content to form ahead of the cold front at the base of the warm conveyor belt airflow. Thus, water vapor in the cyclone’s warm sector, not long-distance transport of water vapor from the subtropics, is responsible for the generation of filaments of high water vapor content. A continuous cycle of evaporation and moisture convergence within the cyclone replenishes water vapor lost via precipitation. Thus, rather than representing a direct and continuous feed of moist air from the subtropics into the center of a cyclone (as suggested by the term “atmospheric river”), these filaments are, in fact, the result of water vapor exported from the cyclone, and thus they represent the footprints left behind as cyclones travel poleward from the subtropics.
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Cites
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A Proposed Algorithm for Moisture Fluxes from Atmospheric Rivers
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Feature Tracking on the Unit Sphere
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Will Extratropical Storms Intensify in a Warmer Climate?
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Atmospheric Rivers as Drought Busters on the U.S. West Coast
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Flooding in Western Washington: The Connection to Atmospheric Rivers*
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Cited by
Anthropogenic stresses on the world’s big rivers
Best, J. (2019) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/s41561-018-0262-x · Cited by 1,315
Causes, impacts and patterns of disastrous river floods
Merz, B., Blöschl, G., Vorogushyn, S., Dottori, F., Aerts, J. C. J. H., Bates, P., Bertola, M., Kemter, M., Kreibich, H., Lall, U., et al. (2021) · Nature Reviews Earth & Environment · doi:10.1038/s43017-021-00195-3 · Cited by 732
Advances in understanding large‐scale responses of the water cycle to climate change
Allan, R. P., Barlow, M., Byrne, M. P., Cherchi, A., Douville, H., Fowler, H. J., Gan, T. Y., Pendergrass, A. G., Rosenfeld, D., Swann, A. L. S., et al. (2020) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/nyas.14337 · Cited by 687
Storm track processes and the opposing influences of climate change
Shaw, T. A., Baldwin, M., Barnes, E. A., Caballero, R., Garfinkel, C. I., Hwang, Y.-T., Li, C., O'Gorman, P. A., Rivière, G., Simpson, I. R., et al. (2016) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/ngeo2783 · Cited by 615
A Scale to Characterize the Strength and Impacts of Atmospheric Rivers
Ralph, F. M., Rutz, J. J., Cordeira, J. M., Dettinger, M., Anderson, M., Reynolds, D., Schick, L. J., & Smallcomb, C. (2019) · Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · doi:10.1175/bams-d-18-0023.1 · Cited by 490
Metadata
- Authors
- Dacre, H. F., Clark, P. A., Martinez-Alvarado, O., Stringer, M. A., & Lavers, D. A.
- Venue
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Publisher
- American Meteorological Society
- Published
- 2015-08-01
- Volume
- 96
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1243-1255
- ISSN
- 0003-0007 (ISSN-L)
- 1520-0477
- OpenAlex
- W2068966059
- Cited by
- 310
- References
- 28
- FWCI
- 9.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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