Meteorology

An Introduction to some Analysis with Soundings

Please use the following files that have been posted:

xsect00z21jan2013.rtf, xsect12z21jan2013.rtf, xs.txt and 2013012020metarsICT.gif .

1. Draw the location of the surface front on the metars gif file. We’ll attempt to identify its type in problem 6.

2. Draw the isotherm for freezing (32 degrees F) on the surface weather map file 2013012020metarsICT.gif .

3. You might recall that I drew curves for some potential temperature sur- faces in class that I obtained from the file xs.txt , which was obtained from the xsect00z21jan2013.rtf text sounding file obtained from the University of Wyoming archive. Draw theta curves for 265, 270, 275, 280, 285, 290, 295, 300, 305, 310, 315, and 320 degrees K in a similar fashion. Use graph paper, and plot latitude as the x–coordinate. Label the altitudes in 1000’s of meters, from 0 to 8 km. You may label the six sounding locations by the three letters identifying them.

4. Using the text sounding, find the freezing level for the southernmost three soundings and plot that on the cross section as a dotted line.

5. Draw the 290 degrees K potential temperature (or theta) surface that you can derive from the 12 Z sounding file xsect12z19jan2013.rtf from Topeka (TOP) south- ward.

6. From the two time periods, and looking at the 290 degrees K potential tem- perature surfaces, do you suppose the front in Oklahoma was a cold front, a warm front, or a stationary front?