Original scientific paper

THE IMPACT OF LEE-SIDE STATIC STABILITY ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF OROGRAPHIC PRECIPITATION

Günther Zängl ; Meteorologisches Institut der Universit¨at M¨unchen, Theresienstraße 37, D-80333 M¨unchen, Germany

Abstract

Numerical simulations are presented to examine the effect of the lee-side static stability on the spillover of orographic precipitation. The results show that the presence a cold-air pool in the lee of a mountain ridge greatly increases the precipitation spillover because the cold pool suppresses the lee-side downslope air motion that otherwise leads to a rapid evaporation of the precipitation. The enhancement of the lee-side precipitation reaches up to two orders of magnitude in a nonconvective environment and ranges around one order of magnitude in convective cases. However, the largest absolute spillover is found for a convectively unstable environment because convective cells decay more slowly than
stratiform precipitation.

Keywords

Orographic precipitation; precipitation spillover; cold-air pools

Hrčak ID:

64413

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/64413

Publication date:

15.12.2005.

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