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Researchers have created the initial live depiction of atmospheric rivers, channels in the atmosphere that carry high levels of moisture and cause heavy precipitation. This breakthrough could potentially improve forecasts for flooding events.
These rivers of wind in the atmosphere are often products of cyclones and determine where intense rain falls and how extreme it could get.
Gaining knowledge about these weather patterns has become particularly important as our world continues to warm, causing the atmosphere to absorb more water vapor and release it as heavy rainfall later on.
In the past, identifying atmospheric rivers through satellite data has been difficult because there was not enough information on wind patterns.
A group of scientists have created a close representation of real-time 3D wind patterns by analyzing temperature data collected from various locations around the world via satellites.
They merged this information with Nasa’s satellite-based system for detecting moisture to uncover a worldwide pattern of atmospheric movements transporting water vapor.
An atmospheric river brings heavy rainfall causing flooding in California.
Atmospheric rivers carry most of the sky’s moisture across the latitudes as they flow polewards, and are responsible for up to a third of the annual rainfall that the US and Europe gets, and as much as 40 per cent of East Asia’s monsoon.
When these atmospheric rivers laden with moisture hit the skies over land they may lead to extreme weather events such as cyclones or typhoons and flooding.
However, past methods of observing these rivers overestimated the frequency of rain they generated, while also underestimating the intensity of the rainfall.
Scientists state that the recent model has the capability to identify sky rivers through satellite data, resulting in a more precise prediction of severe weather occurrences globally.
Scientists utilized the novel detection technique to generate the initial compilation of satellite-derived data on atmospheric rivers, establishing a standard for the majority of the world.
The paper suggests that the approach outlined in it can be utilized on other satellite data to create more accurate and detailed forecasts of atmospheric river movement.
Source: independent.co.uk
