Precipitation Contrasts Between the Chicago Urban Area and an Offshore Station in Southern Lake Michigan

Changnon, Stanley A.

doi:10.1175/1520-0477-42.1.1

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Circles indicate values for the Lake Superior basin, and squares indicate values for either the Lake Michigan or Lake Erie basin. For more information, see Hunt [1959], Changnon [1961], and Derecki [1976, 1980].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving historical precipitation estimates over the Lake Superior basin

Holman

Gronewold

Notaro

et al. 2012

Geophysical Research Letters

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[1] Lake Superior, the northern-most of the Laurentian Great Lakes, is the largest (by surface area) freshwater lake on the planet. Due in part to its high water surface to land area ratio, over one-third of the Lake Superior basin water budget is derived from precipitation falling directly on the lake surface. For most of the Great Lakes (including Lake Superior), historical precipitation estimates extend back to the early 1880s, and are based primarily on land-based gauge measurements. While alternatives to gauge-based estimates have been explored, there is no clear history of applying regional climate models (RCMs) to improve historical over-lake precipitation estimates. To address this gap in regional research, and to advance the state-of-the-art in Great Lakes regional hydrological modeling, we compare 21 years of output from an RCM to conventional gauge-based precipitation estimates for the same time period over the Lake Superior basin. We find that the RCM, unlike the gauge-based method, simulates realistic variations in over-lake atmospheric stability, which propagate into basin-wide precipitation estimates with a relatively low over-lake to over-land precipitation ratio in warm months (roughly 0.7 to 0.8 in June, July, and August) and a relatively high over-lake to overland precipitation ratio in cold months (roughly 1.3 to 1.4 in December and January), compared to gauge-based estimates. Our findings underscore a need to potentially update historical gauge-based precipitation estimates for large lake systems, including Lake Superior, and that RCMs appear to provide a robust and defensible basis for making those updates. Citation:

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving historical precipitation estimates over the Lake Superior basin

Holman

Gronewold

Notaro

et al. 2012

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…An creases have been reported for Budapest [Berkes, 1947], Nuremberg [Kratzer, 1956], Tulsa, Oklahoma [Landsberg, 1956], London [Chandler, 1965;Atkinson, 1968Atkinson, , 1969Atkinson, , 1971], Bombay [Khemani and Murty, 1973], Washington [Woollum and Canfield, 1968], and for several Midwestern U.S. cities [Changnon, 1961[Changnon, , 1962[Changnon, , 1968[Changnon, , 1969[Changnon, , 1970. Weekly rainfall cycles with drier weekends have been reported by Ashworth [1929] in England, Frederick [1970] for Schenectady, and Dettwiller [1970] for Paris.…”

Section: Moisture Fields Clouds and Precipitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The structure of Heat Islands

Garstang¹,

Tyson²,

Emmitt³

1975

Reviews of Geophysics

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Cities as well as ocean islands create mesoscale circulations in the atmosphere on a horizontal scale closely related to the size of the city or island. Contrast in albedo, heat capacity, and hence heating and cooling rates, heat generation, and surface roughness between the ‘island’ and its more uniform surroundings results in the generation of localized weather processes. Ocean islands, which may be simple in relief, free of pollution, and embedded in a uniform surface ocean temperature field, provide an excellent contrast to cities, which may be situated in complex topography and generate heat and pollution. The juxtaposition of the ocean and city islands is used to compare and contrast the induced atmospheric fields and the observed behavior of the atmosphere. The observed fields are then presented in terms of various numerical models. The simpler conditions prevailing over an ocean heat island lead to a more nearly complete three‐dimensional delineation of the thermodynamic and kinematic fields. These data for the ocean islands demonstrate significant deficiencies in the counterpart descriptions that exist for the atmosphere over the city. Complexities of modeling increase over both ocean and city heat islands as velocity fields change from zero to flow with strong vertical shear of the horizontal wind. Steady state models fare poorly under these conditions, whereas models that have attempted to account for the vertical redistribution of the horizontal momentum field show promise.

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“…Previous studies have shown that in the cold season from September to March, the surface temperature of the Great Lakes is higher than the air temperature, triggering convective instability and resulting in increased precipitation over the lakes. In turn, in the warm season, from April to August, the lake surface temperature is lower than the air temperature, inhibiting local convective precipitation in the afternoon (Changnon, 1961; Jiusto & Kaplan, 1972; Notaro et al, 2013; Wilson, 1977). The study of Bates et al (1993) indicated that the Great Lakes contribute up to 25% to the local precipitation in December and 50–70% over the major snow belts downwind from the lakes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of the Largest Lake of the Tibetan Plateau on the Regional Climate

Wen

Gao

et al. 2020

JGR Atmospheres

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Qinghai Lake is the largest lake in China. However, its influence on the local climate remains poorly understood. By using an atmosphere-lake coupled model, we investigated the impact of the lake on the local climate. After the adjustment of four key parameters, the model reasonably reproduced the lake-air interaction. Superimposed by the orographic effects on lake-land breeze circulation, the presence of the lake enhanced precipitation over the southern part of the lake and its adjacent land, while slightly reduced precipitation along the northern shore of the lake. The lake effect on local precipitation revealed a distinct seasonal and diurnal variability, reducing precipitation in May (−6.6%) and June (−4.5%) and increasing it from July (5.7%) to November (125.6%). During the open water season, the lake's daytime cooling effect weakened and the nighttime warming effect strengthened, affecting spatial distribution and intensity of lake-induced precipitation. In early summer, precipitation slightly decreased over the north part of the lake due to the lake's daytime cooling. In turn, lake-induced nighttime warming increased precipitation over the southern section of the lake and its adjacent land. With the start of the autumn cooling in September, heat and moisture fluxes from the lake resulted in precipitation increase in both daytime and nighttime over the entire lake. In October, the background atmospheric circulation coupled with the strong lake effects lead to a small amount but high proportion of lake-induced precipitation spreading evenly over the lake.

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Precipitation Contrasts Between the Chicago Urban Area and an Offshore Station in Southern Lake Michigan

Cited by 7 publications

References 3 publications

Improving historical precipitation estimates over the Lake Superior basin

Improving historical precipitation estimates over the Lake Superior basin

The structure of Heat Islands

Effects of the Largest Lake of the Tibetan Plateau on the Regional Climate

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