Gravity WavesAdded : Wednesday at 15:17 There are some things in life where as a meteorologist we are just unsure. We have to put our hands up and say that we really have no idea how or why things happen. Things like why the new spotlight lightbulbs in the Metcheck kitchen keep popping, why wrapping used paintbrushes in cling film doesn't work but we still do it each time and lastly... gravity waves.
Check out this image of Tropical Storm Harvey yesterday :-
Take a look at the region between Houston and Beaumont. You can (or should) be able to make out some faint ripples in the cloud? "Oh, right... ripples... that's amazing!?" we hear you mutter to yourself.
But, these are gravity waves. We know that they are created when a tropical system, or an intense convective event takes place. We know that hurricanes can be monitored and intensity can be predicted from using the gravity waves. We know that they are created in the same way that if you throw a rock into a pond that the energy radiates out in the form of waves. But that's pretty much all we know.
Right now, Harvey is skirting along the coast of Texas and Louisiana and feeding into the warmth and moisture of the Gulf of Mexico and is still producing large amounts of rainfall for this area :-
The forecast track takes Harvey Northeast over the next few days with still large rainfall amounts to come along this track based on the GEM :-
Back to gravity waves and these features are interesting to meteorologists. In particular to the tropical and hurricane forecast centres around the world. The reason is that they hope to be able to accurately ascertain the intensity and motion of developing hurricanes out in the Atlantic and Pacific without having to send their hurricane hunter planes into them whilst they are thousands of miles out at sea.
Satellites are good, but if there is high cloud shield across the top of the hurricane then it's difficult, nigh impossible to calculate winds or the exact centre of the system itself. The alternative is to kindly ask some BA or Virgin Atlantic pilots if they wouldn't mind taking a quick detour and flying their passengers through a hurricane to take observations, but you can imagine the sort of response they would get to such a request!
It's hopeful that in the next few years we will be able to accurately get this information from using gravity waves from satellite observations.
If we ever find out what they are and how they work then we will let you know, oh and we'll let you know how to store used paintbrushes if we ever find that out too! |