Numerical Tests of a Method for Dynamic Analysis in Regions of Poor Data Coverage¹

1 The research reported here has been sponsered in part by the Geophysics Research Directorate, AFCRL, AFRD, of the Air Research and Development Command, USAF, through its European Office.

Abstract

This paper describes a series of numerical experiments which were done to test a theoretical method for dynamic analysis in regions of poor data coverage. Theoretically, if vorticity were conserved, the exact vorticity field in such a region could be determined by Lagrangian advection of vorticity from areas of known data. The technique was applied to a field of rather dense data where a “hole” was created by withholding all observations within a given area.

The first experiments, assuming the atmosphere to be purely barotropic, resulted in a field within the hole that closely approached, after a reasonable time, the field obtained by a barotropic forecast using all the data. The remaining experiments, under simulated operational conditions, tested the effects of: 1) baroclinic processes, 2) size of hole, 3) frequency of observation, and 4) allowing a single strip of data across the hole. The results were much as predicted by the theory and reasonably accurate analyses were obtained.

Notes

1 The research reported here has been sponsered in part by the Geophysics Research Directorate, AFCRL, AFRD, of the Air Research and Development Command, USAF, through its European Office.