Frequency Waves and Traveling Storm Tracks. Part II: Three-Dimensional Structure

Abstract

A special composite technique (?phase shifting? method) that records both the low- and high-frequency transient activity throughout the troposphere in a framework moving with an individual low-frequency wave of 500-mb geopotential height at 50°N was used to document the three-dimensional structure of the planetary-scale low-frequency waves as well as the attendant traveling storm tracks from the NMC twice-daily analyses of geopotential height and temperature at pressure levels 850, 700, 500, 300, and 200 mb for the ten winters 1967/68 through 1976/77. The following are the main characteristics of the Northern Hemisphere midlatitude planetary-scale low-frequency waves (zonal wavenumber m = 1, 2, 3, and 4) in winter: (i) The amplitude of the planetary scale low-frequency waves is nearly constant with the zonal wavenumber m, and has a maximum at 300 mb for geopotential height and at 850 mb for temperature; (ii) All low-frequency waves have a nearly equivalent barotropic structure (much more so than the stationary waves); (iii) The instantaneous zonal phase speed of an individual low-frequency wave is nearly independent of height and latitude so that we may identify the three-dimensional structure of a low-frequency wave by following that wave at just one pressure level and one latitude in either geopotential height or temperature. The traveling storm tracks, defined as the local maxima on the rms map of the phase-shifted high-frequency eddies, are identifiable from both geopotential height and temperature data throughout the troposphere. They are located over the trough regions of the low-frequency waves. The barotropic feedback (i.e., the geopotential tendency due to the vorticity flux) of the traveling storm tracks tends to reinforce the low-frequency waves and to retard their propagation throughout the troposphere. The baroclinic feedback (i.e., the temperature tendency due to the heat flux) of the traveling storm tracks appears to have an out-of-phase relation with the low-frequency waves in temperature from 850 mb to 300 mb. At 200 mb, the baroclinic feedback is nearly in phase with the low-frequency waves in the temperature field. The mutual dependence between the low-frequency flow and their attendant traveling storm tracks dynamically resembles that between the climatological stationary waves and the climatological storm tracks. Therefore, our observational study seems to lend support for the local instability theory that accounts for the existence of the stationary/traveling storm tracks as the consequence of the zonal inhomogeneity of the climatological mean/low-frequency flow.