Pressure wind adjustment relationships during a multilevel primitive equation prediction process using tropical atmospheric data

Summary In numerical weather forecasting process, with primitive equations, the wind and pressure fields mutually adjust to each other until some form of balance is achieved. The type of balance so achieved by the mass and wind fields during the numerical integration of the primitive equations governing atmospheric motions is not knowna priori. This is particularly so in the case of tropical regions where the pressure wind adjustment laws prevailing in a tropical atmosphere are not well understood.In this study we perform a systematic investigation of the pressure wind adjustment relations during a numerical integration of the primitive equations governing atmospheric motions in a tropical atmosphere. Therefore, a two-day prediction experiment is carried out using the Florida State University Tropical Prediction (FSU) Model (Krishnamurti, 1969;Krishnamurti,et al. 1973;Kanamitsu, 1975). The 200 mb predicted motion (u, v) and height (z) fields are then extracted at 0, 12, 24, 36 and 48 hours of forecast time. Using these motion (u, v) fields three other 200 mb height (z) fields were computed from the inverse nonlinear, linear and quasigeostrophic balance equations. Each of these three diagnostic heights for the 200 mb pressure surface were compared with the respective 200 mb heights obtained from the Florida State University Tropical Preciction Model. The comparison is done by computing the root-mean-square differences between the predicted 200 mb height fields and each of the three 200 mb heights obtained from the inverse non-linear, linear and quasigeostrophic balance equations. The results show that the root-meansquare differences between thez fields from the FSU model and those obtained from the non-linear and linear balance equations lie within the ranges 23 to 44 and 25 to 50 metres respectively. The root-mean-square differences between the predicted heights and the heights computed from the quasigeostrophic balance equation lie in the range 54 to 62 metres. These root-mean-square differences are of significant magnitude since large-scale disturbances in the tropical atmosphere are associated with rather small pressure changes.The variations of these root-mean-square differences as one moves from one forecast time to another exhibit no clear increasing or decreasing trend. In fact the variations appear somewhat random. This rather unsystematic time variation of the root-mean-square differences is a manifestation of the constant changes of the physics in the model as different weather systems evolve in the course of the forecasting process. It seems therefore that the pressure-wind adjustments that take place during a numerical integration of the model equations are of complex nature and cannot simply be approximated by simple diagnostic relations like the ones used in this study.Most of this work was done while the author was at the Florida State University, tallahassee, USA.