A numerical study of Appalachian cold-air damming and coastal frontogenesis.

Abstract

A 24h numerical simulation is used to study features of the wedge-shaped pressure ridge and the coastal front, which occur in E US during winter and often cause substantial errors in operational models. Model-generated, kinematic trajectories showed the strongly sheared, 3-dimensional character of the flow within the damming region. These model results and obervations indicate that a relatively large number of model layers would be required below about 800mb in order to adequately model the thermal and wind field structures.-from Authors