6 research outputs found
A climatology of Rossby wave generation in the middle atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere from MERRA reanalysis
A climatological characterization of Rossby wave generation events in the middle atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere is conducted using 20 years of Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) reanalysis. An automatic detection technique of wave generation events is developed and applied to MERRA reanalysis. The Rossby wave generation events with wave period of 1.25 to 5.5 days and zonal wave number from one to three dominate the Eliassen-Palm flux divergence around the stratopause at high latitudes in the examined 20 year period. These produce an eastward forcing of the general circulation between May and mid-August in that region. Afterward from mid-August to the final warming date, Rossby wave generation events are still present but the Eliassen-Palm flux divergence in the polar stratopause is dominated by low-frequency Rossby waves that propagate from the troposphere. The Rossby wave generation events are associated with potential vorticity gradient inversion, and so they are a manifestation of the dominant barotropic/baroclinic unstable modes that grow at the cost of smearing the negative meridional gradient of potential vorticity. The most likely region of wave generation is found between 60° and 80°S and at a height of 0.7 hPa, but events were detected from 40 hPa to 0.3 hPa (which is the top of the examined region). The mean number of events per year is 24, and its mean duration is 3.35 days. The event duration follows an exponential distribution.Fil: Rodas, Claudio José Francisco. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste; ArgentinaFil: Pulido, Manuel Arturo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica; Argentin
A higher-order ray approximation applied to orographic gravity waves: Gaussian beam approximation
Ray techniques are a promising tool for developing orographic gravity wave drag schemes. However, the modeling of the propagation of orographic waves using standard ray theory in realistic background wind conditions usually encounters several regions, called caustics, where the first-order ray approximation breaks down. In this work the authors develop a higher-order approximation than standard ray theory, named the Gaussian beam approximation, for orographic gravity waves in a background wind that depends on height. The analytical results show that this formulation is free of the singularities that arise in ray theory. Orographic gravity waves that propagate in a background wind that turns with height?the same conditions as in the work of Shutts?are examined under the Gaussian beam approximation. The evolution of the amplitude is well defined in this approximation even at caustics and at the forcing level. When comparing results from the Gaussian beam approximation with high-resolution numerical simulations that compute the exact solution, there is good agreement of the amplitude and phase fields. Realistic orography is represented by means of a superposition of multiple Gaussians in wavenumber space that fit the spectrum of the orography. The technique appears to give a good representation of the disturbances generated by flow over realistic orography.Fil: Pulido, Manuel Arturo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica; ArgentinaFil: Rodas, Claudio José Francisco. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste; Argentin
The breaking of transience inertio-gravity waves in a shear flow using the Gaussian beam approximation.
The propagation of transient inertio-gravity waves in a shear flow is examined using the Gaussian beam formulation. This formulation assumes Gaussian wavepackets in the spectral space and uses a second-order Taylor expansion of the phase of the wave field. In this sense, the Gaussian beam formulation is also an asymptotic approximation like spatial ray tracing; however, the first one is free of the singularities found in spatial ray tracing at caustics. Therefore, the Gaussian beam formulation permits the examination of the evolution of transient inertio-gravity wavepackets from the initial time up to the destabilization of the flow close to the critical levels. We show that the transience favours the development of the dynamical instability relative to the convective instability. In particular, there is a well-defined threshold for which small initial amplitude transient inertio-gravity waves never reach the convective instability criterion. This threshold does not exist for steady-state inertio-gravity waves for which the wave amplitude increases indefinitely towards the critical level. The Gaussian beam formulation is shown to be a powerful tool to treat analytically several aspects of inertio-gravity waves in simple shear flows. In more realistic shear flows, its numerical implementation is readily available and the required numerical calculations have a low computational cost.Fil: Rodas, Claudio José Francisco. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Departamento de Física; ArgentinaFil: Pulido, Manuel Arturo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica; Argentin
Do transience gravity waves in a shear flow break?
The propagation of transient gravity waves in a shear flow towards their critical levels is examined using a ray tracing approximation and a higher-degree (quasi-optic) approximation. Because of its transient forcing, the amplitude of transient waves decays to zero in the neighbourhood of the critical region so that it is not clear whether transient gravity waves will reach the convective instability threshold or not. The analysis shows that the horizontal perturbation decays asymptotically as the inverse of the square root of time, while the vertical wavenumber depends linearly on time, thus transient gravity waves attain convective instability for long times. The theoretical results are compared with numerical simulations. The ray path approximation is not able to reproduce the maximum amplitude, but the quasi-optic approximation gives a reasonable agreement at short and long times. There are three breaking regimes for transient gravity waves. For wave packets with a narrow frequency spectrum (quasi-steady waves) and large enough initial wave amplitude, the wave breaking is similar to the abrupt monochromatic wave overturning. On the other hand, highly transient wave packets will dissipate near the critical region for very long times with small wave amplitudes and high vertical wavenumber. The third regime is a transition between the two extremes; in this case both wave amplitude and vertical wavenumber are important to produce the convective threshold. The dependencies of the convective instability height (a quantity that may be useful for gravity wave parametrizations) on the Richardson number and the frequency spectral width are obtained.Fil: Pulido, Manuel Arturo. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica; ArgentinaFil: Rodas, Claudio José Francisco. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura; Argentin
High gravity-wave activity observed in Patagonia, Southern America: generation by a cyclone passage over the Andes mountain range
The Antarctic peninsula and Patagonia region (the south of South America) have recently been identified as the regions with the highest gravity-wave activity in the world. In this work, the generation and propagation of gravity waves in the Patagonia region in an event of strong wave activity from 30 October 1995–1 November 1995 is examined by means of radiosonde measurements and simulations with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The waves are generated by strong surface winds found near the Andes mountains at a latitude of 49–51°S. The strong low-level winds are related to an extratropical cyclone that propagates southeastward in the South Pacific ocean and approaches the western coast of the continent. The waves propagate southeast toward Tierra del Fuego and they continue their propagation over the Drake Passage. They are found to propagate long meridional (lateral) distances due to the shear background conditions. This fact is corroborated with WRF simulations and a novel technique that combines wavelet analysis and backward ray-tracing. Therefore, this work provides further evidence that high gravity-wave activity found by several studies over Drake Passage may have an orographic origin. During the orographic wave event, which lasts about 72 hours, the horizontal wavelength is unexpectedly found to change day-to-day. The analysis shows that changes in the near-surface meteorological conditions produced by the cyclone passage may trigger different components of the forcing orography. The orographic waves propagate toward their critical levels, which are found at 25 km and above. The radiosonde measurements show that the wave is breaking continuously along a wide altitude range; this finding from measurements supports the picture of continuous wave erosion along the ray path instead of abrupt wave-breaking for the examined wave event. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological SocietyFil: Pulido, Manuel Arturo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Naturales y Agrimensura. Instituto de Modelado e Innovación Tecnológica; ArgentinaFil: Rodas, Claudio José Francisco. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales y Agrimensura. Departamento de Física; ArgentinaFil: Dechat, Diego. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales y Agrimensura. Departamento de Matemática; ArgentinaFil: Lucini, María Magdalena. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales y Agrimensura. Departamento de Matemática; Argentin
Global attitudes in the management of acute appendicitis during COVID-19 pandemic: ACIE Appy Study
Background: Surgical strategies are being adapted to face the COVID-19 pandemic. Recommendations on the management of acute appendicitis have been based on expert opinion, but very little evidence is available. This study addressed that dearth with a snapshot of worldwide approaches to appendicitis.
Methods: The Association of Italian Surgeons in Europe designed an online survey to assess the current attitude of surgeons globally regarding the management of patients with acute appendicitis during the pandemic. Questions were divided into baseline information, hospital organization and screening, personal protective equipment, management and surgical approach, and patient presentation before versus during the pandemic.
Results: Of 744 answers, 709 (from 66 countries) were complete and were included in the analysis. Most hospitals were treating both patients with and those without COVID. There was variation in screening indications and modality used, with chest X-ray plus molecular testing (PCR) being the commonest (19\ub78 per cent). Conservative management of complicated and uncomplicated appendicitis was used by 6\ub76 and 2\ub74 per cent respectively before, but 23\ub77 and 5\ub73 per cent, during the pandemic (both P < 0\ub7001). One-third changed their approach from laparoscopic to open surgery owing to the popular (but evidence-lacking) advice from expert groups during the initial phase of the pandemic. No agreement on how to filter surgical smoke plume during laparoscopy was identified. There was an overall reduction in the number of patients admitted with appendicitis and one-third felt that patients who did present had more severe appendicitis than they usually observe.
Conclusion: Conservative management of mild appendicitis has been possible during the pandemic. The fact that some surgeons switched to open appendicectomy may reflect the poor guidelines that emanated in the early phase of SARS-CoV-2