Abstract
This chapter provides synoptic processes in the formation, maintenance and dissipation of marine fog over the mid-latitude of the Northwestern Pacific Ocean in general and the nearby waters off China and Korea in particular based primarily, but not exclusively, on observational datasets. The marine fog examples are mostly associated with cold sea fog (warmer air flowing over a colder sea) influenced by different synoptic pressure systems, such as a local high pressure in the Yellow Sea, a cold front in the South China Sea and the Mei-Yu (Baiu in Japanese) front in the Kuroshio Extension region. Some warm sea fog (colder air flowing over a warmer sea) processes are included. Emphasis is put on two marine fog events in the Yellow Sea occurred in spring and summer, respectively. Though both are cold sea fog, they differ in many aspects, such as stratifications, synoptic-mesoscale systems, physical processes like radiative cooling and moisture supply. Information on marine fog climatology in the mid-latitude of the Northwestern Pacific and the China/Korea adjacent seas are included in the chapter, which helps readers better understand the synoptic/dynamical analyses in marine fog events.The level of dynamical/synoptic analysis is aimed at a senior undergraduate or graduate level atmospheric science audience. It is still useful for all atmospheric science professionals at any level and for weather forecasters as well.
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- 1.
A type of advection fog formed when air that has been lying over a warm water surface is transported over a colder water surface, resulting in cooling of the lower layer of air below its dewpoint (Glossary of Meteorology, American Meteorological Society, http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/).
- 2.
A fog day is defined when fog is observed at least once a day at the weather observatory.
- 3.
The International Comprehensive Ocean-atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) is a global ocean marine meteorological and surface ocean dataset. It merges many national and international data sources that contain measurements and visual observations from ships (merchant, navy and research), moored and drifting buoys, coastal stations, and other marine platforms. Each report contains individual observations of meteorological and oceanographic variables, such as fog, cloudiness and sea surface temperature.(http://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds540.0/#!description, Woodruff et al., 2011).
- 4.
ICOADS data is not routinely observed since the number of ships, buoys and other platforms available changes with time. To avoid this uncertainty, we define the relative frequency of marine fog occurrence (MFF). The Northwestern Pacific is meshed into 1° × 1° grid to calculate the MFF. When the visibility in an observational report in a certain grid is less than 1 km (the code of VV is 90–94 in ICOADS) and there is neither rainfall nor snow at the same time, we define this as a sea fog event in this grid. The MFF calculated for a grid is that the number of fog events is divided by the number of total observations in the grid.
- 5.
The web location of the dataset is http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/interim-full-daily.
- 6.
July of High-SFF is defined as that the value of the standardized monthly mean SFF over the fog-prone area is larger than 1, and July of low-SFF is just the opposite with the value smaller than −1 (Zhang et al., 2014).
- 7.
Fog patches also have some features in satellite visible images from which they can be identified by an experienced human eye if there are no capping-clouds. For instance, fog textures are relatively uniform with milky-white color, the boundaries generally parallel the coastline, are quite smooth in the open sea side, and the shapes of fog patches do not change as much as clouds do.
- 8.
All buoy data used in the chapter is from this buoy station.
- 9.
The ATWS is at the Qingdao Observatory that near the coast with an elevation of 75 m.
- 10.
For the description of the WRF simulation please refer to Sect. 4.3.
- 11.
The thresholds q = 0.01 k kg−1 is used to represent fog in model, which is corresponding to the visibility of 1000 m according to the Koschmieder formulation (Koschmieder, 1924); q is the cloud water mixing ratio.
- 12.
When an original cold high pressure formed in the mid-high latitudes of the Eurasian continent displaced southeastward to the ocean, it is modified by the warm water and transformed into a warm high.
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Acknowledgments
Suping Zhang thanks her students Long Jingchao, Wang Qian, Chen Yang, Wang Qi, Wang Lei, Wang Yuan, Liu Fei and Jiang Yuxi for their help in drawing the figures and Dr. Yi Li for the retrieval of sea fogs. She thanks Prof. Liu Qinyu, Prof. Xie Shangping, Prof. Fu Gang, Prof. Gao Shanhong and Dr. Li Pengyuan for writing support, and Dr. Liu Jingwu and Dr. Meng Zhaoxi for providing editorial advice. Qingdao Meteorological Bureau kindly provides us with in-situ observations and soundings. Some synoptic observational data are obtained from Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography, Ocean University of China (http://222.195.136.24/forecast.html), the reanalysis data are downloaded from the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) Public Datasets web interface (http://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/) and the MODIS data are from NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration, USA) web page (http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/). Finally, We would like to thank Dr. Darko Koračin, Dr. Clive, Dorman and three anonymous reviewers for their very kind comments and suggestions that are highly helpful for the writing. This work is supported by NSFC projects 41175006 and 41576108, 973 project 2012CB955600, and NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers U1406401.
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Zhang, S., Lewis, J.M. (2017). Synoptic Processes. In: Koračin, D., Dorman, C. (eds) Marine Fog: Challenges and Advancements in Observations, Modeling, and Forecasting. Springer Atmospheric Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45229-6_6
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