From NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and “Earth’s thermostat”
A train of developing tropical low pressure areas stretch from the Eastern Pacific Ocean into the Central Pacific and they were captured in an image from NOAA’s GOES-West satellite on August 1. The train of five tropical lows include the remnants of Tropical Storm Genevieve and newly developed Tropical Storm Iselle.
![atrainof5tro[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/atrainof5tro1.jpg?quality=83)
NOAA manages the GOES-West and GOES-East satellites. Data from the satellites are used to create images and animations from NASA/NOAA’s GOES Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
System 91C
The western-most tropical low pressure area lies to the west of Genevieve’s remnants. That low is designated as System 91C. At 0600 UTC (2 a.m. EDT), the center of System 91C was located near 12.0 north latitude and 167.3 west longitude, about 850 miles southwest of Honolulu, Hawaii. 91C has a low chance of developing into a tropical depression over the next couple of days.
East of System 91C lie Genevieve’s remnants. NOAA’s Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC) issued the final warning on Post-tropical cyclone Genevieve on July 31 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT). At that time it was centered near 13.0 north latitude and 151.1 west longitude, about 1,255 miles east of Johnston Island. It was moving west.
Genevieve’s Remnants
At 8 a.m. EDT on August 1, Genevieve’s remnant low center was located about 500 miles south-southeast of Hilo, Hawaii. CPHC noted the atmospheric conditions are only marginally favorable for its redevelopment over the next few days as it moves westward near 10 mph.
System 96E
Continuing east, System 96E is tracking behind Genevieve’s remnants. System 96E is another developing low pressure area with a minimal chance for becoming a tropical depression. The CPHC gives System 96E a 10 percent chance of development over the next two days. It is located in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, about 1,275 miles east-southeast of the Big Island of Hawaii. Satellite imagery shows the low is producing minimal shower activity. CPHC noted that upper-level winds are currently not conducive for development, but they could become a little more favorable in a few days while the low moves westward at around 10 mph.
Tropical Storm Iselle
Behind System 96E is the only developed tropical cyclone, Tropical Storm Iselle. Iselle is located east-northeast of System 96E. Tropical storm Iselle was born on July 31 at 2100 UTC (5 p.m. EDT). On August 1, Iselle’s maximum sustained winds were already up to 60 mph (95 kph). At 5 a.m. EDT (2 a.m. PDT/0900 UTC).the center of Tropical Storm Iselle was located near latitude 13.5 north and longitude 124.6 west. Iselle is centered about 1,160 miles (1,870 km) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico.
Fifth Area of Low Pressure
The fifth tropical low pressure area is east-southeast of Iselle. That area is a tropical wave that is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms. That wave is located several hundred miles south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. The National Hurricane Center noted that environmental conditions are conducive for gradual development of this system during the next several days while it moves westward at 10 mph. NHC gives this low a 30 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression over the next two days.
Ferd berple occurs still a change Heat energy to kinetic energy.
Caleb: In the case of hailstones you have water going up as 95 degree vapor, and coming down as 32 degree ice. Even ignoring the latent heat released by the phase changes from vapor to liquid and from liquid to ice, we have gone and lost 62 degrees somewhere. Where has it gone?
That was a cleverly worded post. Congratulations.
Do tropical cyclones produce hailstones? just curious. Tiny hailstones that turn to raindrops, perhaps.
Pamela Gray: This paper says anthropogenic warming will weaken Walker Cell circulation.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7089/abs/nature04744.html
This paper says anthropogenic warming will strengthen Walker Cell circulation.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n6/full/nclimate1840.html
With great certainty in each case?
” Matthew R Marler says:
August 2, 2014 at 11:24 am
Caleb: In the case of hailstones you have water going up as 95 degree vapor, and coming down as 32 degree ice. Even ignoring the latent heat released by the phase changes from vapor to liquid and from liquid to ice, we have gone and lost 62 degrees somewhere. Where has it gone?
That was a cleverly worded post. Congratulations.
Do tropical cyclones produce hailstones? just curious. Tiny hailstones that turn to raindrops, perhaps.”
It’s not so much that hail doesn’t form in a hurricane but rather, it doesn’t often reach the ground (ie it melts on the way down).
Here are a couple of explanations why…
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints2/403/
Matthew R Marler says:
August 2, 2014 at 11:24 am
Caleb: In the case of hailstones you have water going up as 95 degree vapor, and coming down as 32 degree ice. Even ignoring the latent heat released by the phase changes from vapor to liquid and from liquid to ice, we have gone and lost 62 degrees somewhere. Where has it gone?
That was a cleverly worded post. Congratulations.
Do tropical cyclones produce hailstones? just curious. Tiny hailstones that turn to raindrops, perhaps.
Tropical cyclones produce hail stones as do tropical thundershowers. They often do not reach the ground as hail stones having melted on the way down. How many of you have experienced a sudden flurry of heavy raindrops from an apparently cloudless sky? These are hail stones being thrown out of the anvil head of a storm. Aircraft are advised to stay 20 miles away from a towering cumulo nimbus storm because of the probability of hail. Of course if the hail melts on the way down to the surface it has taken the latent heat of freezing from the atmosphere to melt,
Please click and check the temperature at a height of about 5 km.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=temp/orthographic=-159.84,-0.87,553
August 7 Halong come close to southern Japan.
ren says:
August 2, 2014 at 12:23 pm
==========
Thanks
Your links don’t go without notice!
For those not familiar with the site ren linked to above, you can click on any location and you will then get a pop-up showing location, temperature, and wind speed. A green circle will be displayed where you click. Click somewhere else and the location will move the circle to that location and an updated pop-up will appear. Go to the menu and change the parameters if you wish.
Cool and informative.
Now, will this knowledge base be disappeared by the powers that be (at the moment)?
My response to Krob’s post is what Genghis said. The principle problem analyzing OLR with satellite soundings looking a the surface and the troposphere in areas of clouds is whether precipitating convection with cloud tops that reaches the stratosphere is happening or not. Most convection cumulo cloud layers are blankets of popcorn puffies with little water precipitating out, and even fewer cumulus and cumulonimbus tops out in the lower stratosphere where the released heat is radiated efficiently to space. This is the case that justifies NOAA dogma saying: negative OLR anoms = enhanced convection, positive OLR anoms = clear skies (where lower troposphere radiative transfer cools, and GHGs can have an effect by raising the effective altitude of radiative loss.)
One way to envision the problems with solely relying on this dogma is that TC’s work because they open a vapor channel, boundary air layer at the sea surface into the stratosphere, with lots of work being done in this convection transfer of energy to space. Indeed it is why many tropic ocean convective disturbances never make it to tropical storm status because they can’t/don’t break through the metastable tropospheric atmospheric boundary.
Hurricanes/TCs move a tremendous amount of heat from the upper 30 meters of their core bands around the eyewall. The inward decreasing central low pressure they generate induces a temp disequilibrium between the surface water and surface air layer as it moves inward in the spiraling bands circulating around the eyewall. This disequilibrium allows this inflow surface layer to absorb tremoudous amounts of water vapor and cools the water surface layer. The adiabatic expansion of the rising saturated air columns delivers lots of work as kinetic energy of horizontal wind flow (as an engine analog the upward expansion is the power stroke where work is done. Also lofting megatons of water to heights of 8-11 km extracts lots of work from the rising convection column and turrns it to stored potential energy. The latent heat is released as IR at the outflowing cloud tops that have broken through the tropopause into the lower stratosphere where the 230 K to 203 K temps ensure it radiatively escapes unimpeded to space. Water falls to the surface, and drier air descends adiabatically heating, to close the heat engine cycle. The TC leaves cooler SSTs in its wake as it moves horizontally.
The conclusion: the train of TC convective cells in the satellite shot Anthony provided are feeding off warmer than avg water, leaving cooler SSTs behind, and a major amount of the heat in this workflow escapes to space as IR via convection and vapor condensation above the tropopause.
@ur momisugly JKrob,
With the discussion on this thread evolving as it has now would be a good time to present your views in light of comments and ren’s and others links.
If you chose to enter the conversation perhaps you will be prepared to provide a timely and current Skew-t chart on a location that I will then provide. It will lead to an interesting dialog from that point onwards. Hope to see ya soon!
JKrob
A very interesting way of obfuscating the discussion by confusing heat and temperature. They are very different things, even defined in different units, Kelvin for temperature and Joules for heat.
Regarding the lapse rate temperature reduction, if one was to take an Avogadro volume of gas at STP and raise it to say 10 Km into the atmosphere. its heat content would remain the same, even though the volume has greatly increased and its temperature has dropped. Lapse rate temperature reduction has nothing to do with heat content per molecule.
Ashby: You don’t view cloud systems as heat engines? That isn’t exactly a new idea: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/MG/PDFs/mono03_tao_joanne.pdf
Thank you for the link.
Ian W: From http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html A NOAA FAQ
Thank you for the link.
Steve Keohane says:
August 2, 2014 at 8:09 am
I thought I acknowledged the role of adiabatic compression, my apologies if I didn’t make that as clear as I could.
One thing I don’t quite understand is why doesn’t this warm (low density), and dry (somewhat higher density than moist) air doesn’t disconnect from the downslope flow and cut through some level of the atmosphere – at some point I’d expect convection would take over and keep it from reaching Denver.
Oh – and it’s not so much that saturate air heats at 3°F/1000ft, but foggy ait does as the cloud droplets evaporates. Once the cloud evaporates, you’re left with saturated air, and it get less saturated as it compresses (and warms) further.
Caleb says:
August 2, 2014 at 10:26 am
The heat is still in the air, now high above your head. There are a couple ways to get it back down. In a hurricane, the best example is the eye. While the pressure in the eye is low, it can’t suck in air in the eyewall because of rotary motion. In fact, the eyewall is sucking in air from the eye. That air gets replaced by pulling down air from the top of the storm, and the result is a bunch of compression, and the temperature goes up, and that’s why a hurricane is a “warm core” storm.
All the air convected upwards in a hurricane doesn’t fit in the eye. Most of it spreads outward high in the atmosphere where it eventually descends. It descends along with all the air below it, so the whole air column around the hurricane descends. Again, warm and dry. This may be why people often have nice weather for cleaning up the aftermath of the hurricane.
JKrob:
You have neglected to account for the latent heat returned to the cloud by condensation. This is convected upward from the surface to eventually be released and radiated to space. This considerable, as evinced by the cooling tracks of hurricanes. And as some have pointed out, you confuse heat with temperature. The cloud tops are cold
because they have radiated the heat convected there. An analogy is the surface of the sun at 7000 K or so while the interior is over 10 million. The heat escapes immediately at the surface. So the sun can be said to have a cold surface, comparatively, yet this says nothing about the heat released there. Same thing with the cloud tops.
So I am afraid Richard of NZ is right- you are confusing heat with temperature. Convection transmits latent heat from the surface and radiates it in the cooler upper atm., cold cloud tops notwithstanding.
Rick Werme:
No, the heat is radiated to space. You are confusing adiabatic effects (temp. change) with heat. The temperature changes but the heat in a parcel of air remains constant.
mpainter says:
August 2, 2014 at 4:34 pm
“Ric” works better, short for Eric.
I thought I was very careful to avoid saying something bogus like adiabatic compression heats the air, e.g. “the result is a bunch of compression, and the temperature goes up”. I’m invoking Willis’ rule – quote the text where I’m “confusing adiabatic effects (temp. change) with heat.” Also, please include the timestamp on my comment. I’ve made several in two threads here.
Hey all, I’m baaack… 😉
Now that I’m back from my nap after my night-shift, I’d better reply before folks get ansy to the ‘can-of-worms’ that I must have opened. …and away we goooo…
Greg says:
August 2, 2014 at 5:58 am
“@Jeff: thunderstorms cool SST significantly and permanently. Where does this head energy end up? ”
Sorry, Greg but I must respectfully disagree with your assertion. Regular tropical showers/thunderstorms do little if anything to the tropical sea surface temp. Remember, when cool rain falls on warm or even hot tropical water, the rain water temp (being cool) is denser than the much warmer surface water…and SINKS (!!!) due to it’s higher density. the warm water just effectively “sucks it up” and after the storm, the surface temp is almost unchanged. This can be seen on the satellite sea water temp charts. Even after passages of African Easterly Waves, Mesoscale Convective Complexes, the ITCZ & other large non-TC systems, the water temp is unchanged. It takes a good sized tropical cyclone to make an impact on sea surface temps & the cooling behind the TC is not because of the rainfall but the heat extracted by the wind.
Genghis says:
August 2, 2014 at 6:12 am
“The way a hurricane cools the ocean surface is through increased evaporation due to high winds. The lighter, saturated air then becomes the fuel for continued or increased winds.”
Absolutely – no question about that,
“The latent energy primarily goes into expanding the Earths atmosphere, Work in other words. The Hurricane itself is thus cooler and enlarged compared to the surrounding area but it contains more energy. That energy will eventually get dispersed and radiated away.”
Sorry, Genghis but I must respectfully disagree with this part. The internal structure of a tropical cyclone is warmer than it’s surrounding environment due to the concentration of convection, latent heat release and, by definition, it is classified as a ‘warm core’ system…for a reason. Now, don’t anyone try to jump on my statement of latent heat release & say it is a conflict of my assertion of the cold cloud tops. My statements on my previous latent heat issues, lapse rate & such still stands.
Ashby says:
August 2, 2014 at 7:41 am
“JKrob,You don’t view cloud systems as heat engines? ”
I never said that I didn’t. One of my main points was that the ‘heat engine’ process for specific parcels stops when that parcel reaches it’s equilibrium level in the upper atmosphere (that is usually the tropopause but may be a lower temperature inversion) and the latent heat/heat engine process stops. Very simple…and very true.
Caleb says:
August 2, 2014 at 10:26 am
“In the case of hailstones you have water going up as 95 degree vapor, and coming down as 32 degree ice. Even ignoring the latent heat released by the phase changes from vapor to liquid and from liquid to ice, we have gone and lost 62 degrees somewhere. Where has it gone?”
This may have been answered by others earlier but I’ll give my take. #1) you may need to re-read my points several more times to get the jist that the atmosphere gets colder with height Sorry, I know, but it gets better every time you read it…I promise!! ;-). As for hailstones, if you study the subject, you find that hailstones are formed in thunderstorms with very vigorus updrafts. Ice pellets that are in the upper portions (read VERY COLD) of cumulonimbus coulds fall do0wn to levels that are above freezing & collect a layer of liquid water. the, they get caught up in the updraft again & are lifted to levels below freezing to refreeze the layer of liquid water to ice. this cycle happens again & again till the chunk of ice is too heavy to be supported by the updraft. It falls down through the progressively warmer air to the ground. If it reaches the ground before melting completely, you get a hail stone. Now, you frequently get large falls of small hail in systems where the freeze line is fairly close to the ground to even smaller hail from a modest storm can make it to the ground. The ‘normal’ freeze level in the mid latitudes in the Summer is around 14,000ft.
Hope that helped.
eyesonu says:
August 2, 2014 at 1:09 pm
“If you chose to enter the conversation perhaps you will be prepared to provide a timely and current Skew-t chart on a location that I will then provide. It will lead to an interesting dialog from that point onwards. Hope to see ya soon!”
http://rucsoundings.noaa.gov/
You are free to do the same, BTW.
Richard of NZ says:
August 2, 2014 at 2:18 pm
“JKrob – A very interesting way of obfuscating the discussion by confusing heat and temperature. They are very different things, even defined in different units, Kelvin for temperature and Joules for heat.”
I never said they were the same. I never once mentioned the term Joules.
“Regarding the lapse rate temperature reduction, if one was to take an Avogadro volume of gas at STP and raise it to say 10 Km into the atmosphere. its heat content would remain the same, even though the volume has greatly increased and its temperature has dropped.”
Well…duhh!! (sorry, couldn’t resist) The temperature has dropped *because* volume has greatly increased.
“Lapse rate temperature reduction has nothing to do with heat content per molecule.”
I never said it didn’t. I never mentioned anything about “heat content per molecule”
mpainter says:
August 2, 2014 at 4:21 pm
“JKrob: You have neglected to account for the latent heat returned to the cloud by condensation.”
I never did such a thing. I clearly & specificlly (sp?) explained the latent heat process in my post. If you missed it, read it again.
“This is convected upward from the surface to eventually be released and radiated to space.”
No, I must disagree – that is still wrong…for all the points I spelled out.
“This considerable, as evinced by the cooling tracks of hurricanes.”
General showers & thunderstorms (gee, any condensation/precipitation process) experiences latent heat release…but leave no ‘cool tracks’ in the ocean.
“as some have pointed out, you confuse heat with temperature.”
I beg to differ.
“The cloud tops are cold because they have radiated the heat convected there.”
No, cloud tops are cold because their surrounding level is cold. When the lifted parcel reaches it’s equilibrium level (EL on the Skew-T chart), the parcel is at the same temperature as it’s surroundings, it is no longer convectively unstable & ceases to rise. This is basic stuff…
‘An analogy is the surface of the sun at 7000 K or so while the interior is over 10 million. The heat escapes immediately at the surface. So the sun can be said to have a cold surface, comparatively, yet this says nothing about the heat released there. Same thing with the cloud tops.”
Sorry, no. You cannot compare the dynamic of the Sun with the Earth’s atmospheric convective dynamics/moisture IR signature.
“So I am afraid Richard of NZ is right- you are confusing heat with temperature. Convection transmits latent heat from the surface and radiates it in the cooler upper atm., cold cloud tops notwithstanding.”
No, I’m afraid you are the one incorrect & I stand by my statements. Satellites measure the heat from the Earth, measured as radiances counts & is directly convertible to temperature.
If you have an issue with any specific statements, address those specificly…with references please 🙂 All my statements are from general meteorology, Skew-T operations/forecasting & weather satellite operations.
Whew!!! …that was fun 😉
Regards,
Jeff
NOAA/NESDIS
WINGRIDDS System Developer
winweather.org
(thought I’d throw those in…)
Ric Werme:
I was referring to your comment at 3:21 pm.No need to invoke Willis, look just above my comment. You have convected heat going in circles, rising through the cloud and returning to the surface as an abiatic effect, while in fact it is radiated to space. The abiatic effect does not involve heat exchange; the convected heat is lost to space.
No wonder NOAA is in trouble.
I just want to clarify the thought behind my last post.
Anthony’s WUWT blog comments section is about the LAST place on this planet anyone should employ an Appeal to Authority argument.
JKrob:
Thanks for your reply. If you enjoyed the last you will also like this. I re-read your comments and I am even more certain that you have mixed heat and temp. in your thinking and that you definitely fail to account for latent heat in a convection. Specifically, you translate latent heat into an adiabatic effect and in sum get .5 degrees cooling per 1000 feet of lift. Then you ignore the principle that latent heat is conserved in the process. Latent heat is conserved, no matter the adiabatic considerations, but you give no further account of it. In fact, it is radiated at the cloudtop and thus latent heat is transported as through a pipeline from the surface to the upper atm. and thence to space.
So no, you do not account for latent heat except wrongly as an adiabatic effect. Thus you imagine that you can dismiss convective cooling as no account by a trick that makes latent heat disappear from the cloud unaccountably.
Hurricanes do leave cool tracks over seawater as shown on this blog last fall, per satellite image, the one off the east coast.
Cloud tops are cool due to lapse rate but the latent heat nonetheless is radiated there. Satellite sensors that say otherwise are very strange, indeed. Perhaps these are operated by some technician who has been instructed by you.
Concerning myself, you have been sniffed out by one who has no B/G in physics. How about that!
@joel O’Brian…
SLAM!!! yes sir boy, you sure set me in my place, eh? (not…) Once again, it goes to show, if someone cannot actually carry on an actual discussion & defend their side with referable information, they resort to attacks. No one has yet to show where any of my facts are wrong.
Oh, BTW – that was not an ‘Appeal to Authority’, it was a show of experience…which you have yet to show….and it shows. And with that, I have more important things to do than to waste my time with the likes of you. WABI
mpainter says:
August 2, 2014 at 4:34 pm
JKrob says:
August 1, 2014 at 6:20 pm
I’m not sure about using Skew-T charts for understanding how OLR makes it through Greenhouse gases and whatnot. How about this image from Ceres:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/620324main_ceres-firstlight-lw-995×562.jpg
(Click on it, I’m not privileged enough to display it here.)
It shows cloud tops radiating at as little as less than 100 W/m^2 and deserts radiating at the very high end. Clear areas around the equator radiate around 300 W/m^2.
mpainter, that image would seem to disprove your claim that high cloud tops radiate well.
JKrob, does this image prove that GHGs play a minor to nearly non-existent role at current CO2 levels?
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/03/first-light-taken-by-nasas-newest-ceres-instrument-inlcudes-stunning-blue-marble-image/ for more.
@mpainter…(jeezzz this is getting old)
“I re-read your comments and I am even more certain that you have mixed heat and temp.”
No I didn’t. read it again…with a larger font 😉
“Specifically, you translate latent heat into an adiabatic effect and in sum get .5 degrees cooling per 1000 feet of lift.”
No I didn’t. read it again…with a larger font 😉
“Latent heat is conserved…”
prove it…with references, please.
“In fact, it is radiated at the cloudtop…”
Once again, prove it…with references, please.
“Hurricanes do leave cool tracks over seawater as shown on this blog last fall, per satellite image, the one off the east coast.”
Of course they do – I never said they didn’t. Geeez, you can’t read! Simple showers/thunderstorms, however, do not!
“Cloud tops are cool due to lapse rate …”
of course…
“…but the latent heat nonetheless is radiated there. ”
Once again, prove it…with references, please.
“Satellite sensors that say otherwise are very strange, indeed.”
Once again, prove it…with references, please.
“Perhaps these are operated by some technician who has been instructed by you.”
Aaaand there’s the attack. (I knew it was coming)
“Concerning myself, you have been sniffed out by one who has no B/G in physics. How about that!”
Heh, I’ve also been ‘sniffed out’ by someone who has no B/G in meteorology…and it show in both cases.
WABI