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Fronts, Jet Streams and the Tropopause

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Extratropical Cyclones

Abstract

The advent of kite and balloon-borne meteorograph soundings during the early 1900s and the subsequent deployment of regional rawinsonde networks provided the observational basis for the study of the spatial and temporal evolution of fronts, jet streams and the tropopause. During the mid-century years (1935–1965), researchers focused on the structural characteristics of fronts and their associated jet streams near the tropopause, and on the diagnosis of the frontogenetic processes and secondary circulations governing their life cycles. The pioneering observational study by J. Bjerknes and E. Palm n (1937) showed fronts to be transitional zones of finite width (~100 km) and depth (~1 km), rather than near zero-order discontinuities extending from the surface to the tropopause. Newton (1954) presented the most comprehensive diagnosis of all components of upper-level frontogenesis during this period, and Sawyer (1956) and Eliassen (1962) derived the diagnostic theory for geostrophically forced secondary circulations about fronts based on the semigeostrophic equations, which was later expanded to the temporal dimension by Hoskins (1971) and Hoskins and Bretherton (1972).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NOAA/ERL/Wave Propagation Laboratory, Boulder, CO, 80303, USA

    M. A. Shapiro

  2. Department of Atmospheric Science, State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    Daniel Keyser

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  1. M. A. Shapiro
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA

    Chester W. Newton

  2. University of Helsinki, Finland

    Eero O. Holopainen

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Shapiro, M.A., Keyser, D. (1990). Fronts, Jet Streams and the Tropopause. In: Newton, C.W., Holopainen, E.O. (eds) Extratropical Cyclones. American Meteorological Society, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-944970-33-8_10

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