Advances in tropical climatology–a review

Understanding tropical climatology is essential to comprehending the atmospheric connections between the tropics and extratropical latitudes weather and climate events. In this review paper, we emphasize the advances in key areas of tropical climatology knowledge since the end of the 20th century and offer a summary, assessment, and discussion of previously published literature. Among the key areas analyzed here, we explore the advances in tropical oceanic and atmospheric variability, such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Madden-Julian Oscillation, and how those teleconnection events have helped us to better understand variabilities in tropical monsoons, tropical cyclones, and drought events. We also discuss new concepts incorporated into the study of tropical cyclones, such as rapid intensification, and how those studies are evolving and helping scientists to better prepare and predict hurricanes. Regarding tropical aerosols, we discuss how satellite-based dust detection has improved the comprehension of Saharan dust as a driver of drought in locations far from the dust source region while simultaneously altering tropical cyclone variability. Finally, our review shows that there have been significant advances in tropical hydroclimatic studies in order to better investigate monsoons, flooding, and drought, helping scholars of tropical climatology to better understand its extreme events

Illite occurrences related to volcanic-hosted hydrothermal mineralization in the biga peninsula, NW Turkey: Implications for the age and origin of fluids

A different approach to investigate the origin of fluids, temperature conditions, age of hydrothermal activity of mineralization in the Biga Peninsula, (Koru, Tesbihdere and Kumarlar) employed mineralogical (illite Kübler index, b cell dimension, polytype) and geochemical (major, trace/REE, O-H stable isotope and Rb/Sr dating) methods. The Kübler Index (KI) values of illites indicate different temperature conditions, such as low temperature (high-grade diagenesis) for Koru deposit, and high temperature (anchizone) for the Tesbihdere and Kumarlar deposits. The textural, mineralogical and geochemical data from illites show that these have potential for estimating the age of hydrothermal activity and fluid characteristics. Both mineralogical (high grade diagenetic to anchizonal KI, 1 M polytype, low d060 values) and geochemical (similar major and trace element composition to host-rocks, low octahedral Mg + Fe contents, oxygen and hydrogen isotope composition) data are compatible with commonly known hydrothermal illites. Stable isotope data of illites are well matched to similar data from fluid inclusions, which indicate mainly magmatic fluids. The Rb/Sr age (22.4 ± 2.3 Ma: latest Oligocene and lowest Miocene) of the illites coincides with plutonic intrusions that are the main instigators of hydrothermal activities related to the extensional tectonic regime in the Biga Peninsula. The mineralogical and geochemical data of illites have some important advantages with respect to the use of fluid inclusions in determining δD of hydrothermal fluids thereby leading to better understanding ore-forming hydrothermal condition

Caribbean Evaporative Demand Drought Index

ERA5-Land derived pentad evaporative demand drought index (EDDI) for the Caribbean from 1981-2021. EDDI is calculated following Hobbins et al. 2016 and the underlying input data are acquired from ERA5-Land (Muñoz-Sabater 2021). This version of EDDI calculates hourly ASCE reference evapotranspiration for a short reference surface following Allen et al. 2005. Leap days have been removed. This dataset was produced by first creating hourly reference evapotranspiration for a short reference crop for every grid point in the study domain following the equations laid out in Allen et al. 2005. Allen, R. G., I. A. Walter, R. L. Elliott, T. A. Howell, D. Itenfisu, M. E. Jensen, and R. L. Snyder, eds., 2005: The ASCE Standardized Reference Evapotranspiration Equation. American Society of Civil Engineers.  EDDI was calculated using 5-day (e.g. pentad) accumulated reference ET following Hobbins et al. 2016. Hobbins, M. T., Wood, A., McEvoy, D. J., Huntington, J. L., Morton, C., Anderson, M., & Hain, C. (2016). The Evaporative Demand Drought Index. Part I: Linking Drought Evolution to Variations in Evaporative Demand, Journal of Hydrometeorology, 17(6), 1745-1761. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/hydr/17/6/jhm-d-15-0121_1.xml  For more information regarding the hourly ERA5-Land inputs to the reference ET equations, please see Munoz-Sabater et al. 2021. J. Muñoz-Sabater, Dutra, E., Agustí-Panareda, A., Albergel, C., Arduini, G., Balsamo, G., Boussetta, S., Choulga, M., Harrigan, S., Hersbach, H., Martens, B., Miralles, D. G., Piles, M., Rodríguez-Fernández, N. J., Zsoter, E., Buontempo, C., and Thépaut, J.-N.: ERA5-Land: A state-of-the-art global reanalysis dataset for land applications, Earth Syst. Sci. Data,13, 4349–4383, 2021. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4349-2021.  </p

ERA5 Derived Integrated Water Vapor Transport for Eastern and Central U.S.

integrated water vapor transport (IVT) calculated using u-wind, v-wind, and specific humidity from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ERA5 Reanalysis Dataset on pressure levels from 1000 to 300 hPa. IVT is calculated as follows: IVT =1/g ∫(1000 hPa)^(300 hPa)qV dp</p

Atmospheric Rivers of the Eastern U.S.

This dataset includes integrated vapor transport (IVT), calculated from ERA5 reanalysis, for 6-hour periods from 1979-2020 that have identified atmospheric rivers. Four different NetCDF files have been produced with different atmospheric river detection criteria: 1. Length of 1500 km; > 500 kg m-1 s-1 IVT (era5_ar500_nohurr.nc) 2. Length of 1500 km; > 750 kg m-1 s-1 IVT (era5_ar750_nohurr.nc) 3. Length of 2000 km; > 500 kg m-1 s-1 IVT (era5_ar500_2000_nohurr.nc) 4. Length of 2000 km; > 750 kg m-1 s-1 IVT (era5_ar750_2000_nohurr.nc) These datasets have been filtered to remove any tropical cyclone driven atmospheric rivers by using HURDAT2 to cross-reference. The dependent variables, u-wind, v-wind, and specific humidity are derived from ERA5 reanalysis (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5).</p

Recurring Trans-Atlantic Dust Pathways during June-July

&lt;p&gt;These data represent a self-organizing map (SOM) classification of all trans-Atlantic integrated dust fluxes (IDT) between June-July 1981-2020 as presented in:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Miller, P. W.,&nbsp;&lt;/strong&gt;and C. Ramseyer, In press: The relationship between the Saharan Air Layer, convective environmental conditions, and precipitation in Puerto Rico. &lt;i&gt;Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres&lt;/i&gt;.&nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each daily IDT field is paired to one of 12 discrete pathways in idt_bmus_junjul.csv. The mean composite IDT over the tropical North Atlantic for each of these 12 patterns, as well as the mean composite Galvez-Davison Index (ERS_idt_node_gdi_1981_2020_junjul.nc) and mean composite precipitation over Puerto Rico (ERS_idt_node_prcp_1981_2020_junjul.nc) for the same node-date pairings are also provided. See the above-referenced manuscript for more details.&lt;/p&gt

On the emerging global relevance of atmospheric rivers and impacts on landscapes and water resources

This progress report discusses the lineage of atmospheric rivers (ARs) research, focusing on the transformation of the topic from an important regional atmospheric feature along the U.S. West Coast to a globally relevant driver of extreme hydrometeorological events. As the AR literature has advanced, so has the regional expanse covered, initially expanding into the Central U.S. and Europe. Recently, new, emerging regions are being explored in the AR literature such as the high latitudes, New Zealand, China, North Africa, and the Middle East. The literature on the impact of AR-driven hydrometeorological events on land surface processes (e.g., landslides and avalanches) and water resources is also rapidly developing. This progress report seeks to expose the broader physical geography discipline to the global relevance of ARs and promote new applied research frontiers at the intersection of ARs and those processes studied by physical geographers. </jats:p

Did the Climate Forecast System Anticipate the 2015 Caribbean Drought?

AbstractIn groundwater-limited settings, such as Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, societal, ecological, and agricultural water needs depend on regular rainfall. Though long-range numerical weather predication models explicitly predict precipitation, such quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF) critically failed to detect the historic 2015 Caribbean drought. Consequently, this work examines the feasibility of developing a drought early warning tool using the Gálvez–Davison index (GDI), a tropical convective potential index, derived from the Climate Forecast System, version 2 (CFSv2). Drought forecasts are focused on Puerto Rico’s early rainfall season (ERS; April–July), which is susceptible to intrusions of strongly stable Saharan air and represents the largest source of hydroclimatic variability for the island. A fully coupled atmosphere–ocean–land model, the CFSv2 can plausibly detect the transatlantic advection of low-GDI Saharan air with multimonth lead times. The mean ERS GDI is calculated from semidaily CFSv2 forecasts beginning 1 January of each year between 2012 and 2018 and monitored as the initialization approaches 1 April. The CFSv2 demonstrates a broad region of statistically significant correlations with observed GDI across the eastern Caribbean up to 30 days prior to the ERS. During 2015, the CFSv2 forecast a low-GDI tongue extending across the Atlantic toward the Caribbean with 60–90 days lead time and placed Puerto Rico’s 2015 ERS beneath the 15th percentile of all 1982–2018 ERS forecasts with up to 30 days lead time. A preliminary GDI-based QPF tool tested herein is a statistically significant improvement over climatology for the driest years