Climate Anomalies for a Particular Region Essay

Climate Anomalies for a Particular Region - Essay Example The waves are disturbed by two forcing, namely, Orographic forcing and Thermal forcing. Orographic forcing, more relevant in northern hemisphere owing to dominating surface topography with Rocky Mountain and Tibetan plateau, relates to planetary waves generated due to the compression and expansion of air columns, leading to vortex stretching which can be balanced by the vorticity advection (Dickinson, 1978). Thermal forcing, varying with seasonal change in thermal effect, relates to generation of planetary waves by the adiabatic heating and cooling due to rising and sinking air motions; this maybe balanced by temperature advection (Ashe, 1987). In the subsequent paragraphs we shall examine climate anomalies for a particular region in the context of the large scale hemispheric wave pattern with a multiple objective to firstly, convert temperature and precipitation data, obtained from the Plymouth University Portal, into appropriate graphs, secondly, discuss and compare the seasons wit h reference to the hemispheric flow and lastly, discuss the possible reason for the variation in the temperature and precipitation on temporal and spatial scales. Examination of the climate anomalies involved collection of temperature and precipitati... This was followed by statistical analysis of the data which included determination of mean temperature and standard deviation for the four regions. The monthly hemispheric charts were plotted with the help of NOAA's Climate Diagnostics Centre following the link, http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cdc/dtat.ncep.reanalysis.derived.html. Following steps are required for obtaining the plot:- When the above link opens Click on 'Pressure level Data'. The page automatically moves down. Now click on the 'Geo-potential height'. This should open a new page, scroll down and Click on 'make plot (Monthly Mean)'. To improve the chart quality, adhere to following details:- Select latitude between 20 and 90N, Select 500 mb and Select suitable dates (from, to). Now, select 'Plot' on white background, Polar stereographic and Remove Colour Plot. Finally click on Create Plot. Figure 1: Map of Europe, Source: Praxis network, 2007 The results were obtained place-wise, for four different regions, for summer and winter seasons. All graphs show the average monthly temperature or precipitation during a season. The data has been taken from the following regions (also marked in Figure 1 above):- Station Elevation (m) Latitude Longitude Toulouse 152 43.60 N 1.40 E Edinburgh 41 55.95 N 3.35 W Alborg 13 57.10 N 9.87 E Helsinki 53 60.30 N 25.00 E Table 1: Region Coordinates Final Results Figure 2: shows the average summer temperature for the period 1951-1991 for all stations Toulouse The average summer temperature graph shows the average maximum temperatures recorded in Toulouse from 1951 to 1991. The highest average temperature of 21.9 C was recorded in Toulouse in the summer of 1990 while lowest