A SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE CASE STUDY WITH TIROS I DATA

Abstract

On April 28, 1980, TIROS I obtained pictures of an exceedingly sharp-edged cloud deck over the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, of cirrus associated with the jet stream on the west coast of South America, and of a mature cyclone in the central South Atlantic. Surface, upper-air, and cross section analyses are presented and compared with pictured cloud features. Because of the wide spacing of the data, the locations of double jet streams had to be deduced by examining the horizontal temperature gradients associated with Northern Hemisphere jets and assuming that the same general relation holds in the Southern Hemisphere. An operational surface analysis is shown to be inconsistent with the pictured data in the oceanic region where the analysis was based on a single ship report. A modification of the analysis is suggested to illustrate the potential of meteorological satellite data in data-sparse regions.