Inner Structures of Snow Clouds over the Sea of Japan Observed by Instrumented Aircraft: A Review

Abstract

 Heavy snowfall, caused by snow clouds over the Sea of Japan, can severely affect social and economic activities in Japan. Therefore, snow clouds, which form and develop mainly over the ocean and bring heavy snowfall to populated coastal plains, have been extensively studied from the perspective of disaster prediction and prevention. Most studies analyzed data acquired by aerological, meteorological satellite, and radar observations, or conducted numerical simulations. Because of the difficulties involved in accessing cloud systems over the ocean, however, few in situ observation data have been available, and up until the middle 1990s, many problems remained unsolved or their analysis and simulation results had not been validated. Here we review knowledge gained from instrumented aircraft observations, made from the middle 1990s through the early 2000s, particularly the development of a convectively mixed boundary layer and the inner structures of longitudinal-mode cloud bands, Japan-Sea polar-air mass convergence zone cloud bands, and a polar low. Unsolved problems relating to the inner structures and precipitation mechanisms of snow clouds and the expected contributions of aircraft observations to further progress in these areas of atmospheric science are also briefly discussed.