Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan. Ser. II
Online ISSN : 2186-9057
Print ISSN : 0026-1165
ISSN-L : 0026-1165
Volume 93, Issue 3
Displaying 1-3 of 3 articles from this issue
Articles
  • Fumio MARUYAMA, Kenji KAI, Hiroshi MORIMOTO
    2015 Volume 93 Issue 3 Pages 331-341
    Published: 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 10, 2015
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
    A climatic regime shift is characterized by an abrupt transition from one quasi-steady climatic state to another. We attempted to explain the change of multifractal behavior of climate indices when a regime shift occurred. We used the wavelet - transform method to analyze the multifractal behaviors of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index (Niño3.4 index), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index, North Pacific Index (NPI), Pacific/North American pattern (PNA) index, and West Pacific pattern (WP) index. We showed the change of multifractality of these climate indices. When the wavelet coherences between the Niño3.4 index and NPI, NPI and PDO index, and Niño3.4 and PDO indices became strong, changes from multifractal to monofractal behavior were observed at climatic regime shifts. It may be possible to explain the background of the change of fractality by regarding climate change as the consequence of mutual interactions of various climatic elements. A fluctuation increase is observed in a coupled chaotic system just before chaos synchronization, which is when fractality and states change. We expect that a similar mechanism possibly exists for a climatic regime shift. When fluctuations became large and multifractality became strong, a climatic regime shift occurred and a change from multifractal to monofractal behavior was observed. The strong interaction of climatic phenomena, such as the ENSO, PDO, and Aleutian Low, caused a climatic regime shift. The fractality change of the PDO index almost corresponded to the regime shifts. In terms of multifractal analysis, we conclude that a climatic regime shift corresponds to a change from multifractality to monofractality of the PDO index.
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  • Yueqing LI, Lian YU, Baode CHEN
    2015 Volume 93 Issue 3 Pages 343-358
    Published: 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 10, 2015
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
    An Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) was conducted to test the rationality and regional representation of the layout of the upper-air observation system over the Tibetan Plateau and neighboring areas and to consider the actual significance of observation stations. The simulations were validated primarily by comparing results from corresponding experiments wherein simulated observations were assimilated into the initial fields or not. The results showed that there were significant differences in prediction for the different layouts. The layout with both existing and planned observation stations was better than the ones with only existing or only planned stations in terms of forecast accuracy, especially around the areas with new observations added. Specifically, for winds, there were large improvements in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu Corridor, Tibet, Yunnan and mid-west and northeast Sichuan. For temperature and relative humidity, the most significant improvement was in Tibet, southwest and east Qinghai, mid-east Sichuan, and mid-north Yunnan. For heights, the major improvements were in Xinjiang, Qinghai, east Tibet, mid-west Sichuan and Yunnan. The results also validated the layout of the observations and indicated the necessity to add planned observations over the Tibetan Plateau and neighboring areas.
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  • Ahoro ADACHI, Takahisa KOBAYASHI, Hiroshi YAMAUCHI
    2015 Volume 93 Issue 3 Pages 359-388
    Published: 2015
    Released on J-STAGE: July 10, 2015
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
    A method for estimating three parameters of a gamma raindrop size distribution (DSD) model and the rainfall rate from polarimetric radar at attenuating frequency was developed. The algorithm was developed based on the self-consistency principle but was expanded to consider the attenuation effect by describing the interrelation between polarimetric measurements along the range profile. The proposed method does not require any assumptions of relation among DSD parameters or simplifications of equations that describe the relation between the axis ratio and diameter of raindrops, which have been used in previous studies. Moreover, the proposed algorithm needs no external reference data such as two-dimensional video disdrometer measurements for attenuation corrections because it retrieves the co-polar and differential specific attenuation from the interrelation among the polarimetric measurements.
     The performance of this algorithm was evaluated by comparison with optical disdrometers and a weighing precipitation gauge. The evaluation of the algorithm showed that the retrieved three DSD parameters of raindrops, reflectivity, and differential reflectivity from actual C-band polarimetric radar data have fairly good agreement with those obtained by surface measurements. Moreover, rainfall rates retrieved using this algorithm have comparable precision with those estimated from the specific differential phase, and outperform those estimated through the so-called Z-R relation, particularly during heavy rainfall. Furthermore, the effects of raindrop temperature and shape parameter on the retrieval of the rainfall rate were examined. The results show that for radar operating at C-band, a raindrop temperature error of 10°C may be negligible in rainfall rate estimations, whereas a shape parameter error of 2 may increase the error of the rainfall rate estimation by 10 %.
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