The spring Yellow Sea fog: synoptic and air–sea characteristics associated with different airflow paths

Jian Huang; Bin Wang; Xin Wang; Fei Huang; Weihua Lü; Tu Jing

doi:10.1007/s13131-018-1155-y

The spring Yellow Sea fog: synoptic and air–sea characteristics associated with different airflow paths

Jian Huang
, Bin Wang
, Xin Wang
, Fei Huang
, Weihua Lü
, Tu Jing

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

The fog occurs frequently over the Yellow Sea in spring (April–May), a climatical period of Asian monsoon transition. A comprehensive survey of the characteristic weather pattern and the air-sea condition is provided associated with the fog for the period of 1960–2006. The sea fog is categorized by airflow pathways of backward trajectory cluster analysis with the surface observations derived from international comprehensive oceanatmosphere dataset (I_COADS) I_COADS datasets and contemporaneous wind fields from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis. On the basis of the airflow paths, the large-scale lower-tropospheric circulation patterns and the associated surface divergence, the distribution of a vertical humidity, the horizontal water vapor transportation and the air-sea temperature difference are investigated and the major findings are summarized as follows. (1) Four primary clusters of the airflow paths that lead to spring sea fog formation are identified. They are originated from the northwest, east, southeast and southwest of the Yellow Sea, respectively. (2) Springtime Yellow Sea fog occurs under two typical weather patterns: the Yellow Sea high (YSH) and cyclone and anticyclone couplet (CAC). Each pattern appears by about equal chance in April but the YSH occurrence drops to around one third and the CAC rises to around two third of chance in May. (3) The common feature in the two types of synoptic conditions is that surface divergence center is located over the Yellow Sea. (4) For the YSH type of fog, water vapor comes mainly from local evaporation with a well-defined dry layer present in the lower atmosphere; for the CAC type of fog, however, water vapor comes mainly from areas outside the Yellow Sea with a thick surface layer of high humidity. (5) With the differences in weather patterns and its associated vertical distribution of the humidity and the transportation of water vapor, there are two types of sea fogs. Most fogs of the CAC types are “warm” fog, while fogs of YSH type have nearly equal chance to be “warm” and “cold” fog.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	20-29
Number of pages	10
Journal	Acta Oceanologica Sinica
Volume	37
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s13131-018-1155-y
State	Published - Jan 1 2018

Funding

In fact, the Yellow Sea fog is unique. It can be formed in various weather systems, originated from mid-latitude associated winter monsoon, or from tropics and subtropics associated with summer monsoon (Zhou et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2006), including the high pressure that moved out of continent, intrusion of the ridge of the North Pacific High, and the low or trough migrated from the China’s Mainland into the Yellow Sea (Wang, 1985). As such, the sea fog must be formed with different meteorological and marine environment. Some previous works have shown that water vapor associated with the Yellow Sea fog formation has different origins in the fog season (Zhou et al., 2004; Foundation item: The National Natural Science Foundation of China under contract No. 41275025; the Special Fund for Strategic Pilot Technology of Chinese Academy of Sciences under contract No. XDA11010403; the National Key Basic Research Program (973 Progrom) of China under controut No. 2014CB953903. *Corresponding author, E-mail: [email protected]? Huang and Zhou, 2006). Little has been known of the meteorological and marine characteristics of the Yellow Sea fog under different synoptic conditions, particularly the different physical mechanisms for the sea fog development and persistence under the control of winter and summer monsoons. Recently, it is suggested that the sea fog over the Yellow Sea shows a seasonal variation representing monsoon characteristics, especially in boreal spring of Asian monsoon transition period from winter monsoon to summer monsoon (Zhang et al., 2009). However, it is still not clear whether the sea fog over the Yellow Sea in spring is a warm fog or cold fog during the sea fog development and persistence (Zhang and Ren, 2010), and what the marine meteorological conditions in favor of warm and cold fog formation, development, persistence and dissipation are.

Keywords

airflow clusters
characteristics of sea fog
springtime sea fog
synoptic patterns
Yellow Sea

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10.1007/s13131-018-1155-y

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title = "The spring Yellow Sea fog: synoptic and air–sea characteristics associated with different airflow paths",

abstract = "The fog occurs frequently over the Yellow Sea in spring (April–May), a climatical period of Asian monsoon transition. A comprehensive survey of the characteristic weather pattern and the air-sea condition is provided associated with the fog for the period of 1960–2006. The sea fog is categorized by airflow pathways of backward trajectory cluster analysis with the surface observations derived from international comprehensive oceanatmosphere dataset (I\_COADS) I\_COADS datasets and contemporaneous wind fields from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis. On the basis of the airflow paths, the large-scale lower-tropospheric circulation patterns and the associated surface divergence, the distribution of a vertical humidity, the horizontal water vapor transportation and the air-sea temperature difference are investigated and the major findings are summarized as follows. (1) Four primary clusters of the airflow paths that lead to spring sea fog formation are identified. They are originated from the northwest, east, southeast and southwest of the Yellow Sea, respectively. (2) Springtime Yellow Sea fog occurs under two typical weather patterns: the Yellow Sea high (YSH) and cyclone and anticyclone couplet (CAC). Each pattern appears by about equal chance in April but the YSH occurrence drops to around one third and the CAC rises to around two third of chance in May. (3) The common feature in the two types of synoptic conditions is that surface divergence center is located over the Yellow Sea. (4) For the YSH type of fog, water vapor comes mainly from local evaporation with a well-defined dry layer present in the lower atmosphere; for the CAC type of fog, however, water vapor comes mainly from areas outside the Yellow Sea with a thick surface layer of high humidity. (5) With the differences in weather patterns and its associated vertical distribution of the humidity and the transportation of water vapor, there are two types of sea fogs. Most fogs of the CAC types are “warm” fog, while fogs of YSH type have nearly equal chance to be “warm” and “cold” fog.",

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AB - The fog occurs frequently over the Yellow Sea in spring (April–May), a climatical period of Asian monsoon transition. A comprehensive survey of the characteristic weather pattern and the air-sea condition is provided associated with the fog for the period of 1960–2006. The sea fog is categorized by airflow pathways of backward trajectory cluster analysis with the surface observations derived from international comprehensive oceanatmosphere dataset (I_COADS) I_COADS datasets and contemporaneous wind fields from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) reanalysis. On the basis of the airflow paths, the large-scale lower-tropospheric circulation patterns and the associated surface divergence, the distribution of a vertical humidity, the horizontal water vapor transportation and the air-sea temperature difference are investigated and the major findings are summarized as follows. (1) Four primary clusters of the airflow paths that lead to spring sea fog formation are identified. They are originated from the northwest, east, southeast and southwest of the Yellow Sea, respectively. (2) Springtime Yellow Sea fog occurs under two typical weather patterns: the Yellow Sea high (YSH) and cyclone and anticyclone couplet (CAC). Each pattern appears by about equal chance in April but the YSH occurrence drops to around one third and the CAC rises to around two third of chance in May. (3) The common feature in the two types of synoptic conditions is that surface divergence center is located over the Yellow Sea. (4) For the YSH type of fog, water vapor comes mainly from local evaporation with a well-defined dry layer present in the lower atmosphere; for the CAC type of fog, however, water vapor comes mainly from areas outside the Yellow Sea with a thick surface layer of high humidity. (5) With the differences in weather patterns and its associated vertical distribution of the humidity and the transportation of water vapor, there are two types of sea fogs. Most fogs of the CAC types are “warm” fog, while fogs of YSH type have nearly equal chance to be “warm” and “cold” fog.

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The spring Yellow Sea fog: synoptic and air–sea characteristics associated with different airflow paths

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