The March 1993 Superstorm Cyclogenesis: Incipient Phase Synoptic- and Convective-Scale Flow Interaction and Model Performance

The incipient stages of the 12–14 March 1993 ‘‘superstorm’ ’ (SS93) cyclogenesis over the Gulf of Mexico are examined. Noteworthy aspects of SS93 include 1) it is the deepest extratropical cyclone ever observed over the Gulf of Mexico during the 1957–96 period, and 2) existing operational prediction models performed poorly in simulating the incipient cyclogenesis over the northwestern Gulf of Mexico. A dynamic-tropopause (DT) analysis shows that SS93 is triggered by a potent potential vorticity (PV) anomaly as it crosses extreme northern Mexico and approaches the Gulf of Mexico. The low-level environment over the western Gulf of Mexico is warmed, moistened, and destabilized by a persistent southerly flow ahead of the approaching PV anomaly. Ascent and a lowering of the DT (associated with a lowering of the potential temperature) ahead of the PV anomaly contributes to further destabilization that is realized in the form of a massive convective outbreak. An examination of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Medium Range Forecast (MRF) model-initialized fields after convection begins shows that the MRF does not fully resolve important features of the potential temperature, pressure, and wind fields on the DT in the incipient SS93 environment. Similarly, the NCEP MRF 12-h/24-h forecasts verifying 1200 UTC 12 March and 0000 UTC 13 March are unable to simulate sufficient deep convection over the Gulf of Mexico, low-level PV growth in the incipient storm environment

2012 Unidata Users Workshop Navigating Earth System Science Data

The Unidata Program Center (UPC) worked with the Unidata Users Committee to organize triennial summer workshops on topics of interest to the Unidata community. The 2012 workshop theme, entitled \u27navigating Earth system science data\u27, was designed in part to address a two-pronged challenge. The challenge involve how could Unidata best serve the data needs of the education and the research communities. One key goal of the workshop was to raise the level of data awareness within the academic geoscience community. This goal was accomplished through a diverse set of presentations on software, data access/applications, visions of the future, and a student-led poster session. The workshop was jointly developed by the UPC and Unidata Users Committee, and its goals reflected Unidata\u27s prime directives to provide and support the flow of real-time geoscience data and to facilitate the use of these data in geoscience education