Morris, F., Robinson, C.M., Reeder, M. et al. (4 more authors) (2025) Closing The Circulation Budget. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 130 (2). e2024JD041738. ISSN 2169-897X
Abstract
Circulation budgets can identify physical processes underpinning tropical cyclones, mesoscale convective vortices, and other weather systems where there are interactions across scales. It is unclear, however,how well these budgets close in practice. The present study uses the rapid intensification of Tropical Cyclone Nepartak (2016) as a case study to quantify the practical limitations of calculating circulation budgets using standard reanalyzes and numerical weather model data. First, we evaluate the circulation budget with ERA5.The budget residual can be reduced considerably by including contributions to circulation changes from subgrid‐scale momentum transports, and reduced further with 24‐hr smoothing, which dampens the discontinuous effects of data assimilation. Second, using a high‐resolution Met Office Unified Model simulation, we examine how the choice of the path used (the domain boundary) affects the budget closure.Third, the truncation errors associated with numerical differentiation in time and space are investigated. The circulation budget improves as the model data are analyzed with more frequent time output intervals, and as the output grid spacing decreases. For the tropical convective examples evaluated here, the column mean budget residuals increase by up to 50% as the output intervals increase from 5 min to 3 hr. Errors also increase if the data are regridded to a coarser horizontal grid spacing and when convection straddles the domain boundary. A key result is that the circulation budget need not close for physical inferences made about the circulation and its evolution to be meaningful, thus validating the use of the technique in prior studies.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 Crown copyright and The Author(s). This article is published with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the King's Printer for Scotland. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | circulation budget, circulation, vorticity, atmospheric dynamics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 07 Jan 2025 15:10 |
Last Modified: | 11 Feb 2025 11:43 |
Published Version: | https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.102... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1029/2024JD041738 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:221406 |
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