1973 Volume 24 Issue 4 Pages 357-378
Characteristic features of cloud and echo distribution and their temporal variation over the east coast of the Asian Continent are studied for the one month period of February 1968 by analyzing the ES SA cloud brightness maps and PPI pictures over the Japan Islands. The study lays special emphasis on the relation among the air-mass transformation, generation of convective clouds and the development of the wave disturbances over the Kuroshio region.
The results of the analysis reveal the existence of a pers i s tent zone of convective cloud along the Kuroshio current. Two kinds of quasi-periodic variation in the cloud/echo amount with a time scale of about 4 and 2 days, respectively, predominate along the cloud zone. These variations are known to be associated with the wave cyclones.
The echo system associated with the disturbance which developed under the influence of the long wave trough grows quite rapidly into a huge vortex-shaped echo system. The very intense or penetrative convections within the echo system are confined within a mesoscale area. The echo system associated with an undeveloped disturbance, on the one hand, does not grow remarkably.
