Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan. Ser. II
Online ISSN : 2186-9057
Print ISSN : 0026-1165
ISSN-L : 0026-1165
Volume 94, Issue 1
Displaying 1-8 of 8 articles from this issue
Articles
  • Tomoko ICHIMARU, Shunsuke NOGUCHI, Toshihiko HIROOKA, Hitoshi MUKOUGAW ...
    2016 Volume 94 Issue 1 Pages 7-24
    Published: 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: March 08, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
     Practical predictability of the stratospheric circulation in the boreal winters during the period 2001-2006 has been examined using the archive of 1-month ensemble forecast datasets provided by the Japan Meteorological Agency. To investigate the predictability limit, two measures of the Root-Mean-Square Error (RMSE) and Anomaly Correlation (AC) have been used for the 10-hPa geopotential height field. In the winter stratosphere, an intermittent character of planetary wave activity causes two specific periods of the stratospheric circulation, i.e., an undisturbed phase with inactive planetary waves and a disturbed phase with active ones. Therefore, the predictability needs to be evaluated taking account of this feature. On the basis of careful consideration, the mean predictable period can be estimated to about 10 days during the disturbed phase; it is longer than the tropospheric predictable period of about 7 days. However, it exhibits large variability because of different growth rates of forecast errors caused by contributions of both wave and zonal-mean fields. During the undisturbed phase, the predictable period based on the AC is almost the same as that of the disturbed phase, although the predictable period based on the RMSE is extremely long, since the RMSE predictability is measured against the climatological standard deviation affected by disturbed phases. Therefore, the horizontal pattern of the stratospheric circulation is less predictable even though the forecast error is quite small.
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  • Izumi SAITO, Keiichi ISHIOKA
    2016 Volume 94 Issue 1 Pages 25-39
    Published: 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: March 08, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
     To provide a theoretical explanation for the emergence of zonally elongated structures from two-dimensional turbulence on a rotating sphere, a quasi-invariant of the system is obtained by a minimization process, which is a straightforward extension of a similar process proposed by a previous study on β-plane turbulence to the spherical geometry. The quasi-invariant is defined as a weighted sum of the energy density in the wavenumber space. The distribution of the weighting coefficient has airfoil-shaped contours, with which the anisotropic energy transfer that favors zonally elongated structures can be explained.
     Large number of numerical time-integrations of decaying two-dimensional turbulence on a rotating sphere are conducted to examine the conservation of the quasi-invariant. It is shown that the quasi-invariant is conserved well when the nonlinearity of the system is sufficiently weak; furthermore, energy is transferred in the wavenumber space apparently along the airfoil-shaped contours of the weighting coefficient for the quasi-invariant.
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  • Yunjian ZHAN, Guoyu REN, Yuyu REN
    2016 Volume 94 Issue 1 Pages 41-53
    Published: 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: March 08, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
     This paper analyzes climatological characteristics and temporal variation of the start and end dates of the rainy season over East Asia using a daily precipitation dataset for the time period 1951-2009. The rainy season is defined by a 5-day rainfall standard, and the regional average time series is constructed by applying the weighted-average method. Results show that the rainy season starts later, ends earlier and lasts shorter from southeast to northwest. In spring, the rainy belt slowly moves northward from 30 to 33°N in China and from 33 to 36°N on the Korean Peninsula and Japanese Islands. From 1951 to 2009, the rainy season generally began earlier in China but later in Korea and Japan, and it ended earlier at latitudes north of 35°N and later south of 35°N. The region-averaged start and end dates of the rainy season in the study region insignificantly advanced, and the duration of the rainy season insignificantly increased from 1951 to 2009. The rainy season duration slightly decreased in the Russian Far East and in northern and western China, and significantly decreased on the Korean Peninsula and the southern Hokkaido Islands, though it obviously increased in the Yangtze-Huaihe River Basins.
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  • Rochelle CORONEL, Masahiro SAWADA, Toshiki IWASAKI
    2016 Volume 94 Issue 1 Pages 55-73
    Published: 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: March 08, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
     The sensitivity of the simulated Typhoon Megi (2010) to frictional perturbations is studied by conducting experiments with the Deardorff planetary boundary layer parameterization. Here, we increase the surface drag by 50 % (Cd1.5) and change the scheme to Mellor-Yamada-Nakanishi-Niino Level 3 (MYNN) using the Meteorological Research Institute/Japan Meteorological Agency nonhydrostatic model. At 2-km horizontal resolution, the control run simulates deeper central pressure, and shallower maximum winds and inflow layer that are comparable to observations.
     In this study, Cd1.5 and MYNN are found to introduce substantial change on Megi’s low-level wind structures by disrupting the gradient-wind balance more than the control run. Increasing the surface drag reduces low-level tangential velocity and induces a stronger inflow near the surface and toward the center of the storm. This results in a narrow radius and lower height of the maximum tangential wind. On the contrary, the MYNN case increases the cyclone’s size and elevates the level of the induced inflow at the boundary layer, far from the center. From the energetics point of view, the impact of the imbalance introduced by the experiments during the initial stage of intensification is dual, i.e., while it enhances the generation of kinetic energy, it also amplifies frictional dissipation. In the kinetic energy equation, the induced inflow strengthens the secondary circulation, and subsequently, intensifies the dynamical energy conversion. On the other hand, our results illustrate that the mechanism for energy loss in Cd1.5 is significantly different from that in MYNN due to their different impacts on wind structures and momentum flux. Nevertheless, the increase in energy gain in both experiments is overweighed by the loss due to large dissipation of absolute angular momentum, leaving less kinetic energy for further intensification.
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  • Yufang GAO, Yaodeng CHEN, Lina ZHANG, Tao PENG
    2016 Volume 94 Issue 1 Pages 75-89
    Published: 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: March 08, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
     From July 1 to 13, 2007, a widespread heavy rainfall event occurred in the Huaihe River Basin (HB) in China, with an average rainfall of nearly 465 mm in the area. The main purpose of this study is to integrate a rainfall estimate by the China New Generation Weather Radar S-band radar (CINRAD-SB) into the Hydrologic Engineering Center’s Hydrologic Modeling System (HEC-HMS) and analyze the CINRAD-SB rainfall estimation and its impact on the runoff simulation of this type of rare flood event in a region with complex terrain.
     For the CINRAD-SB rainfall estimation four methods are considered: (1) Z = 300R1.4 (Z: radar reflectivity, R: rainfall intensity); (2) a rainfall estimation error adjustment by using a Kalman Filter (KF); (3) Optimal Interpolation (OI); and (4) the Union method, which is composed of KF and OI. The HEC-HMS is used to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of the CINRAD-SB rainfall and its impact on the hydrological simulation of the event.
     Rainfall estimations from the four methods are compared with rain gauge observations. The four methods underestimate the precipitation amounts, while for the Union method the values of the relative bias are closer to zero. The relative bias values of the four methods vary with different rainfall intensity, those of the Union method vary the least among the four methods. This evaluation indicates that runoff simulations based on radar-rainfall could reproduce similar overall patterns to the observed streamflow. The peak discharge contains obvious improvements - for instance, the skill score is 0.6 - in model runs with forcing that is provided by the Union method vs. rain gauge data. These results might guide the improvement of hydrological predictions that are driven by radar rainfall.
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  • Prabir K. PATRA, Tazu SAEKI, Edward J. DLUGOKENCKY, Kentaro ISHIJIMA, ...
    2016 Volume 94 Issue 1 Pages 91-113
    Published: 2016
    Released on J-STAGE: March 08, 2016
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Supplementary material
     Methane (CH4) plays important roles in atmospheric chemistry and short-term forcing of climate. A clear understanding of atmospheric CH4’s budget of emissions and losses is required to aid sustainable management of Earth’s future environment. We used an atmospheric chemistry-transport model (JAMSTEC’s ACTM) for simulating atmospheric CH4. A global inverse modeling system has been developed for estimating CH4 emissions from 53 land regions for 2002-2012 using measurements at 39 sites. An ensemble of 7 inversions is performed by varying a priori emissions. Global net CH4 emissions varied between 505-509 and 524-545 Tg yr-1 during 2002-2006 and 2008-2012, respectively (ranges based on 7 inversion cases), with a step like increase in 2007 in agreement with atmospheric measurements. The inversion system did not account for interannual variations in OH radicals reacting with CH4 in the atmosphere. Our results suggest that the recent update of the EDGAR inventory (version 4.2FT2010) overestimated the global total emissions by at least 25 Tg yr-1 in 2010. The increase in CH4 emission since 2004 originated in the tropical and southern hemisphere regions, coinciding with an increase in non-dairy cattle stocks by ∼10 % from 2002 (with 1056 million heads) to 2012, leading to ∼10 Tg yr-1 increase in emissions from enteric fermentation. All 7 ensemble cases robustly estimated the interannual variations in emissions, but poorly constrained the seasonal cycle amplitude or phase consistently for all regions due to the sparse observational network. Forward simulation results using both a priori and a posteriori emissions are compared with independent aircraft measurements for validation. Based on the results of the comparison, we reject the upper limit (545 Tg yr-1) of global total emissions as 14 Tg yr-1 too high during 2008-2012, which allows us to further conclude that the increase in CH4 emissions over the East Asia (mainly China) region was 7-8 Tg yr-1 between the 2002-2006 and 2008-2012 periods, contrary to 1-17 Tg yr-1 in the a priori emissions.
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