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This paper investigates the formation mechanisms for a local wind phenomenon known as Washoe Zephyr that occurs frequently in the lee of the Sierra Nevada. Unlike the typical thermally driven slope flows with upslope wind during daytime and downslope at night, the Washoe Zephyr winds blow down the lee slopes of the Sierra Nevada in the afternoon against the local pressure gradient. Long-term hourly surface wind data from several stations on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada and rawinsonde sounding data in the region are analyzed and numerical simulations are performed to test the suggested hypotheses on the formation mechanisms for this interesting phenomenon. The results from surface and upper-air climate data analyses and numerical modeling indicate that the Washoe Zephyr is primarily a result of a regional-scale pressure gradient that develops because of asymmetric heating of the atmosphere between the western side of the Sierra Nevada and the elevated, semiarid central Nevada and Great Basin on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. The frequent influence of the Pacific high on California in the summer season helps to enhance this pressure gradient and therefore strengthen the flow. Westerly synoptic-scale winds over the Sierra Nevada and the associated downward momentum transfer are not necessary for its development, but strong westerly winds aloft work in concert with the regional-scale pressure gradient to produce the strongest Washoe Zephyr events.

Grass fires, although not as intense as forest fires, present a major threat to life and property during periods of drought in the Great Plains of the United States. Recently, major wildland grass fires in Texas burned nearly 1.6 million acres and destroyed over 730 homes and 1320 other buildings. The fires resulted in the death of 19 people, an estimated loss of 10,000 head of livestock, and more than $628 million in damage, making the 2005/06 fire season the worst on record for the state of Texas. As an aid to fire management, various models have been developed to describe fire behavior. However, these models strongly emphasize fuels and fail to adequately consider the role of convective dynamics within the atmosphere and its interaction with the fire due to the lack of observational data. To fill this gap, an intensive field measurement campaign called FireFlux was conducted during February 2006 near Houston, Texas. The campaign employed a variety of instrument platforms to collect turbulence data at multiple levels within and immediately downwind of a 155 acre tall-grass prairie burn unit. This paper presents some first-time observations of atmospheric turbulent structures/fluxes associated with intense grass fires and provides a basis to further our understanding of the dynamics of grass fires and their interactions with the atmosphere.

The diurnal evolution of the three-dimensional summer-season mean wind and temperature structure in California's Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys (collectively called the Central Valley) is investigated using data from 22 radar wind profiler/radio acoustic sounding systems (RASS) operated as part of the Central California Ozone Study in 2000. The profiler network revealed, for the first time, that the persistent summer-season flow pattern documented by surface observations extends 800-1000 in above the surface. At most locations, upvalley winds persist during both day and night except at the upper ends of the valleys and close to the valley sidewalls where diurnal wind reversals occur. Wind speeds exhibit pronounced diurnal oscillations, with amplitudes decreasing with height. A low-level wind maximum occurs in the lowest 300 m, with a sharp decrease in speed above the maximum. Especially well defined nocturnal low-level jets occur at sites in the southern San Joaquin Valley, where maximum speeds of 10 m [s.sup.-1] or more occur 1-2 h before midnight at heights near 300 m. The afternoon mixed layer, generally deeper than 1000 m, increases in depth with up-valley distance in both valleys. At night, temperature inversions develop in the lowest several hundred meters with near-isothermal layers above. Mean temperatures in the lowest 500 m of the valleys are always warmer than at the same altitude over the coast, and temperature increases from the lower to upper valleys. The diurnal oscillations of the coastvalley and along-valley temperature and pressure difference reach a maximum in late afternoon and a minimum in early morning. These oscillations are ill phase with the diurnal variation of westerly onshore flows. The alongvalley wind maxima, however, occur 1-2 h before midnight, whereas the along-valley pressure gradient maxima are usually found just before sunset.

To study the impacts of climate change on water resources in the western U.S., global climate simulations were produced using the National Center for Atmospheric Research/Department of Energy (NCAR/DOE) Parallel Climate Model (PCM). The Penn State/NCAR Mesoscale Model (MM5) was used to downscale the PCM control (20 years) and three future (2040-2060) climate simulations to yield ensemble regional climate simulations at 40 km spatial resolution for the western U.S. This paper describes the regional simulations and focuses on the hydroclimate conditions in the Columbia River Basin (CRB) and Sacramento-San Joaquin River (SSJ) Basin. Results based on global and regional simulations show that by mid-century, the average regional warming of 1 to 2.5[degrees]C strongly affects snowpack in the western U.S. Along coastal mountains, reduction in annual snowpack was about 70% as indicated by the regional simulations. Besides changes in mean temperature, precipitation, and snowpack, cold season extreme daily precipitation increased by 5 to 15 mm/day (15-20%) along the Cascades and the Sierra. The warming resulted in increased rainfall at the expense of reduced snowfall, and reduced snow accumulation (or earlier snowmelt) during the cold season. In the CRB, these changes were accompanied by more frequent rain-on-snow events. Overall, they induced higher likelihood of wintertime flooding and reduced runoff and soil moisture in the summer. Changes in surface water and energy budgets in the CRB and SSJ basin were affected mainly by changes in surface temperature, which were statistically significant at the 0.95 confidence level. Changes in precipitation, while spatially incoherent, were not statistically significant except for the drying trend during summer. Because snow and runoff are highly sensitive to spatial distributions of temperature and precipitation, this study shows that (1) downscaling provides more realistic estimates of hydrologic impacts in mountainous regions such as the western U.S., and (2) despite relatively small changes in temperature and precipitation, changes in snowpack and runoff can be much larger on monthly to seasonal time scales because the effects of temperature and precipitation are integrated over time and space through various surface hydrological and land-atmosphere feedback processes. Although the results reported in this study were derived from an ensemble of regional climate simulations driven by a global climate model that displays low climate sensitivity compared with most other models, climate change was found to significantly affect water resources in the western U.S. by the mid twenty-first century.

This paper investigates the diurnal evolution of thermally driven plain-mountain winds, up- and down-valley winds, up- and downslope winds, and land-lake breezes for summer fair weather conditions in four regions of the Intermountain West where dense wind networks have been operated. Because of the diverse topography in these regions, the results are expected to be broadly representative of thermally driven wind climates in the Intermountain West. The regions include the Wasatch Front Valleys of northern Utah, the Snake River Plain of Idaho, the southern Nevada basin and range province, and central Arizona. The analysis examines wind characteristics, including the regularity of the winds and interactions of the four types of thermally driven winds, using meteorological data from the University of Utah's MesoWest network. In general, on fair weather days, winds in all four regions exhibit a consistent direction from day to day at a given hour. A measure of this wind consistency is defined. The nighttime hours exhibit a generally higher consistency than the daytime hours. Lower consistency during the day-night and night-day transition periods reflects day-to-day variations in the timing of wind system reversals. Thermally driven circulations are similar in the four regions, but the Wasatch Front Valleys are influenced by lake breezes from the adjacent Great Salt Lake, the Snake River Plain is influenced by along-plain circulations and localized outflow from the Central Idaho Mountains, and winds in both southern Nevada and central Arizona are influenced by plain-mountain circulations associated with regional-scale contrasts in elevation and surface heating.

A climatology of the Great Plains low-level jet (LLJ) is developed from 2 yr of research rawinsonde data obtained up to eight times per day at a site in north-central Oklahoma. These data have better height and time resolution than earlier studies, and show that jets are stronger than previously reported and that the heights of maximum wind speed are closer to the ground. LLJs are present in 47% of the warm season soundings and 45% of the cold season soundings. More than 50% of the LLJs have wind maxima below 500 m above ground level (AGL). Because the 404-MHz radar profiler network in the central United States has its first data points at 500 m AGL, it is likely to miss some LLJ events and will have inadequate vertical resolution of LLJ wind structure. Previous studies have identified LLJs on the basis of a wind speed profile criterion. This criterion fails to separate the classical southerly LLJs from the less frequent northerly jets, which differ in both structure and evolution. Classical southerly jets are more frequent; they occur year round, with the highest frequency in the summer and at night. Southerly LLJ wind speed maxima are most frequently found at 300-600 m AGL, and peak speeds, typically between 15 and 21 m [s.sup.-1], are attained at 0200 CST. The height of the wind speed maximum varies little during nighttime - a period when surface-based inversions grow in depth but generally remain below the jet. Winds at the nose of the southerly jets exhibit a distinct diurnal clockwise turning in wind direction and an oscillation in speed. Northerly jets occur year round. They are generally associated with cold air outbreaks and are found in the cold air behind southward-moving cold fronts. In winter, their frequency of occurrence rivals that of the southerly jets. Their occurrence, however, is less dependent on time of day, with a weak daytime maximum. They are more variable in the heights of their wind speed maxima, are associated more frequently with elevated frontal inversions, and do not exhibit a clockwise turning with time. The heights of the jet speed maxima are found to increase with distance behind the surface cold front.

VALDRIFT (valley drift) is a valley atmospheric transport, diffusion, and deposition model. The model is phenomenological - that is, the dominant meteorological processes governing the behavior of the valley atmosphere are formulated explicitly in the model, although in a highly parameterized fashion. The key meteorological processes treated are 1) nonsteady and nonhomogeneous along-valley winds and turbulent diffusivities, 2) convective boundary layer growth, 3) inversion descent, and 4) nocturnal temperature inversion breakup. The model is applicable under relatively cloud-free, undisturbed synoptic conditions in which the winds in the valley are predominantly along the valley's axis. The model is configured to operate through one diurnal cycle for a single narrow valley. The inputs required are the valley topographic characteristics, pollutant release rate as a function of time and space, wind speed and direction as functions of time measured at one height, lateral and vertical turbulent eddy diffusivities as functions of stability, and the valley temperature inversion characteristics at sunrise. The outputs are three-dimensional concentration fields and ground-level deposition fields as functions of time. The scientific foundations of VALDRIFT are given in this paper along with a brief discussion of the model inputs and outputs. Air concentrations estimated by VALDRIFT compare favorably with results from a tracer experiment conducted in a deep mountain valley.

A short review of solar semidiurnal atmospheric tides is presented. Semidiurnal atmospheric tides have been documented in the troposphere primarily through analyses of long time series of surface pressure measurements, although the winds produced by these tides have, by now, been well documented in the middle and upper atmosphere. Recent research using UHF and very-high-frequency radar wind profilers has now identified tidal wind perturbations in tropospheric data. This review focuses on the tidal wind characteristics and the distinctive signature of this wind system in radar profiler data analyses.

The diurnal variation of regional wind patterns in the complex terrain of the Grand Canyon area was investigated for wintertime fair weather days using a network of wind sensors on 10-m towers. Thermally driven along-slope and along-valley circulations were present at all sites within the region, but wind characteristics varied from site to site depending on nearby topography and exposure. Along the Colorado River upstream from the Grand Canyon, a series of subbasins produce a regional circulation system characterized by convergence of low-level air into the subbasins at night and divergence of air from the subbasins during the day. Contrary to valley wind theory expectations, locations down valley from the subbasin centers experience up-valley winds during nighttime and down-valley winds during daytime.

The Colorado Plateau, surrounded by a ring of mountains, has the meteorological characteristics of a basin. Deep, persistent potential temperature inversions form in this basin in winter. The formation, maintenance, and dissipation of these inversions are investigated using two to four times daily radiosonde data from the winter and early spring of 1989-90. In winter, inversion evolution is forced primarily by synoptic-scale events. The buildup takes place over one or more days as warm air advection occurs above the basin with the approach of high pressure ridges. The breakup, which occurs with cold air advection above the basin as troughs approach, can occur over periods less than 12 h. Many approaching troughs modulate inversion strength and depth but are too weak to destroy the persistent inversion. Later in the winter and spring, the radiation-induced nocturnal inversion is destroyed nearly every day by the daytime growth of convective boundary layers from the basin floor and sidewalls.

Wintertime temperature profiles in the Grand Canyon exhibit a neutral to isothermal stratification during both daytime and nighttime, with only rare instances of actual temperature inversions. The canyon warms during daytime and cools during nighttime more or less uniformly through the canyon's entire depth. This weak stability and temperature structure evolution differ from other Rocky Mountain valleys, which develop strong nocturnal inversions and exhibit convective and stable boundary layers that grow upward from the valley floor. Mechanisms that may be responsible for the different behavior of the Grand Canyon are discussed, including the possibility that the canyon atmosphere is frequently mixed to near-neutral stratification when cold air drains into the top of the canyon from the nearby snow-covered Kaibab Plateau. Another feature of canyon temperature profiles is the sharp inversions that often form near the canyon rims. These are generally produced when warm air is advected over the canyon in advance of passing synoptic-scale ridges. Wintertime winds in the main canyon are not classical diurnal along-valley wind systems. Rather, they are driven along the canyon axis by the horizontal synoptic-scale pressure gradient that is superimposed along the canyon's axis by passing synoptic-scale weather disturbances. They may thus bring winds into the canyon from either end at any time of day. The implications of the observed canyon boundary layer structure for air pollution dispersion are discussed.