Case Study of Moisture and Heat Budgets within Atmospheric Rivers

This work studies moisture and heat budgets within two atmospheric rivers (ARs) that made landfall on the west coast of North America during January 2009. Three-dimensional kinematic and thermodynamic fields were constructed using ECMWF Year of Tropical Convection data and global gridded precipitation datasets. Differences between the two ARs are observed, even though both had embedded precipitating convective organizations of the same spatial scale. AR1 extended from 20° to 50°N in an almost west–east orientation. It had excessive warm and moist near-surface conditions. Its precipitating systems were mainly distributed on the southwest and northeast sides of the AR, and tended to exhibit stratiform-type vertical heat and moisture transports. In contrast, AR2 spanned latitudes between 20° and 60°N in a north–south orientation. It was narrower and shorter than AR1, and was mostly covered by pronounced precipitating systems, dominated by a deep convection type of heating throughout the troposphere. In association with these distinctions, the atmosphere over the northeastern Pacific on average experienced episodic cooling and drying despite the occurrence of AR1, yet underwent heating and drying during AR2, when latent heating was strong. Downward sensible heat flux and weak upward surface latent heat flux were observed particularly in AR1. In addition, cloud radiative forcing (CRF) was very weak in AR1, whereas it was strongly negative in AR2. In short, it is found that the oceanic convection in ARs both impacts the moisture transport of ARs, as well as modifies the heat balance in the midlatitudes through latent heat release, convective heat transport, surface heat fluxes, and CRF.