ANALYSIS OF EXTRATROPICAL TRANSITION OF CYCLONES IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN USING GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE IMAGERY

Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin often undergo a process called extratropical transition (ET) and transform from warm-core to cold-core systems while retaining strong winds, heavy rainfall, and large ocean waves. Infrared satellite imagery from channels 2 and 4 of the Geostationary Operationa...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wood, Amy Rebecca
Other Authors: Grady Dixon, Mike Brown, Jamie Dyer
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: MSSTATE 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://sun.library.msstate.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-10282009-160148/
Description
Summary:Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin often undergo a process called extratropical transition (ET) and transform from warm-core to cold-core systems while retaining strong winds, heavy rainfall, and large ocean waves. Infrared satellite imagery from channels 2 and 4 of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) were used to examine key structural changes, synoptic interactions, and loss of deep centered convection in order to determine onset and completion of ET. The primary indicator for ET onset in 75% of cases was found to be a persistent increase in storm asymmetry along with the appearance of warm frontogenesis in its northern region. Cold frontogenesis in the southern portion of the storm was the secondary indicator for declaring onset of ET. Completion of ET was marked by the loss of centered deep convection for all cases. The average ET transition time was 18 hours for 60% of the cases.