Weather bureau meteorology for the rest of us.

Upper-air maps give the bureau meteorology personnel shortcuts to present elaborate principles to users.

At this bureau meteorology experts

check the high elevation weather maps and see many curves bending across from the left side to the right. Sometimes many of them will lie snugly together and they will spread out in other areas.

The lines loosely represent wind flow, where several together form a well-defined stream. Not as much current exists where they spread apart. In a fashion similar to a river or gulf stream jet, these streams meander, merge and separate quite often.

Are you interested in predictions of the future? This site shows what forecast techniques meteorologists use. Perhaps you can design your own that capitalizes on your passion... See how I made this one.

Group kinetics - atmospheric streamlines

A stream of this sort is a steady air current. A thousand miles or so long and over a hundred wide, they can last for a moderately long time, at least a few days. You can see these on a forcast jet stream map for instance.

Picture one of these maps. Some streamlines span a substantial distance. While largest ones can cover a good portion of a continent, smaller streamlines have a regional influence.

We call straight east-west motion in either direction Zonal flow. Meridional flow is quite the opposite. It takes a huge roundabout route, swinging far north and south on the map as it makes its way across.

Air flow research

A bureau meteorology map can show two or more streams simultaneously over the same continent or ocean.

Two streams become in-phase when their high and low points, known as ridges and troughs, line up directly above (north and south of) each other.

In fact they may appear to merge for a while. We use the term out of phase when the big humps are not neatly aligned.

Graphically, a stream shows up on the map as a group of constant pressure-height contour lines. Why do we care about this arrangement?

One of those lines, dubbed the control line, can signify the entire stream in a summary depiction or forecast plot. The ideal curve for meteorologists to pick passes north of a vorticity maximum, or south of a maximum.

#22

Search this site for more information now.

Simulation Streamlines

Streams and control lines constitute a valid example of how a thorough bureau meteorology analysis gives forecasters critical tools. We use them for making better predictions, and especially presenting our information for untrained audiences.

ADD TO YOUR SOCIAL BOOKMARKS:

Blink

Del.icio.us

Digg

Furl

Google

Simpy

Spurl

Technorati

Y! MyWeb