Application of Satellite-Derived Atmospheric Motion Vectors for Estimating Mesoscale Flows

Abstract

Abstract This study demonstrates methods to obtain high-density, satellite-derived atmospheric motion vectors (AMV) that contain both synoptic-scale and mesoscale flow components associated with and induced by cumuliform clouds through adjustments made to the University of Wisconsin—Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (UW-CIMSS) AMV processing algorithm. Operational AMV processing is geared toward the identification of synoptic-scale motions in geostrophic balance, which are useful in data assimilation applications. AMVs identified in the vicinity of deep convection are often rejected by quality-control checks used in the production of operational AMV datasets. Few users of these data have considered the use of AMVs with ageostrophic flow components, which often fail checks that assure both spatial coherence between neighboring AMVs and a strong correlation to an NWP-model first-guess wind field. The UW-CIMSS algorithm identifies coherent cloud and water vapor features (i.e., targets) that can be tracked within a sequence of geostationary visible (VIS) and infrared (IR) imagery. AMVs are derived through the combined use of satellite feature tracking and an NWP-model first guess. Reducing the impact of the NWP-model first guess on the final AMV field, in addition to adjusting the target selection and vector-editing schemes, is found to result in greater than a 20-fold increase in the number of AMVs obtained from the UW-CIMSS algorithm for one convective storm case examined here. Over a three-image sequence of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-12 VIS and IR data, 3516 AMVs are obtained, most of which contain flow components that deviate considerably from geostrophy. In comparison, 152 AMVs are derived when a tighter NWP-model constraint and no targeting adjustments were imposed, similar to settings used with operational AMV production algorithms. A detailed analysis reveals that many of these 3516 vectors contain low-level (100–70 kPa) convergent and midlevel (70–40 kPa) to upper-level (40–10 kPa) divergent motion components consistent with localized mesoscale flow patterns. The applicability of AMVs for estimating cloud-top cooling rates at the 1-km pixel scale is demonstrated with excellent correspondence to rates identified by a human expert.