Mohamed Foudad

and 4 more

Clear-Air Turbulence (CAT) is associated with wind shear in the vicinity of jet streams in upper atmospheric levels. This turbulence occurs in cloudless regions and causes most weather-related aircraft accidents. Recent studies have shown that in response to climate change, CAT could significantly increase over certain regions as a consequence of strengthening of jet streams. In this study we use several atmospheric reanalyses and coupled model experiments database to evaluate CAT recent and future changes in the Northern Hemisphere. Several CAT diagnostics are computed to assess the sensitivity of results to different turbulence representations. A significant positive trend in CAT frequency is found in the reanalyses in different regions in the Northern Hemisphere over the period 1980-2021. The signal-to-noise analysis shows that over North Africa, East Asia and Middle East the increase of CAT occurrence in the last decades is likely attributed to global warming. In contrast, over the North Atlantic and North Pacific the internal climate variability is too strong to detect a response to anthropogenic forcing in the observed trends. Future climate projections show that over several regions in the Northern Hemisphere, CAT is projected to increase with a high model agreement and independently of the CAT diagnostic used. The largest increase in CAT is projected to occur over East Asia. In the North Atlantic, large uncertainty remains due to lack of model agreement and differences among the various CAT diagnostics.

Leighton M Watson

and 5 more

Infrasound observations are increasingly used to constrain properties of volcanic eruptions. In order to better interpret infrasound observations, however, there is a need to better understand the relationship between eruption properties and sound generation. Here we perform two-dimensional computational aeroacoustic simulations where we solve the compressible Navier-Stokes equations for pure-air with a large-eddy simulation approximation. We simulate idealized impulsive volcanic eruptions where the exit velocity is specified and the eruption is pressure-balanced with the atmosphere. Our nonlinear simulation results are compared with the commonly-used analytical linear acoustics model of a compact monopole source radiating acoustic waves isotropically in a half space. The monopole source model matches the simulations for low exit velocities (<100 m/s or M ~ 0.3 where M is the Mach number); however, the two solutions diverge as the exit velocity increases with the simulations developing lower peak amplitude, more rapid onset, and anisotropic radiation with stronger infrasound signals recorded above the vent than on Earth’s surface. Our simulations show that interpreting ground-based infrasound observations with the monopole source model can result in an underestimation of the erupted volume for eruptions with sonic or supersonic exit velocities. We examine nonlinear effects and show that nonlinear effects during propagation are relatively minor for the parameters considered. Instead, the dominant nonlinear effect is advection by the complex flow structure that develops above the vent. This work demonstrates the need to consider anisotropic radiation patterns and jet dynamics when interpreting infrasound observations, particularly for eruptions with sonic or supersonic exit velocities.