Cyclones dominated by latent heating

The popular cyclogenesis classification scheme of Petterrsen and Smebye divides cyclones into types A and B. The former type is dominated by thermal advection at low levels, consistent with the growth of a baroclinic wave, whereas the latter type of system develops as a transient phase of non-modal growth when a pre-existing upper level feature passes over a baroclinic region. More recently, however, a third type of system was proposed by Deveson et al. This is the type C system, the development of which is dominated by the action of strong mid-level latent heating. Such heating can generate important anomalies of PV that act to suppress the formation of a low-level thermal anomaly and that interact destructively with the pre-existing upper level feature. There are two cyclones observed in the FASTEX experiment that fit into this suggested type.

Some links for this work:

Papers:

1. A paper on the FASTEX IOP18 cyclone, a type C candidate
2. A paper on type C cyclones

Talks:

1. Talk on Theme 1 of the UWERN programme for the UWERN audit.
2. Talk on possible mesoscale applications for the UWERN microscale model, presented at a microscale workshop (December 2003)
3. A talk on type C cyclones, presented at the 2002 EGS conference