A probability index for surface zonda wind occurrence at Mendoza city through vertical sounding principal components analysis

Abstract

The aim of this work is to obtain an index for predicting the probability of occurrence of zonda event at surface level from sounding data at Mendoza city, Argentine. To accomplish this goal, surface zonda wind events were previously found with an objective classification method (OCM) only considering the surface station values. Once obtained the dates and the onset time of each event, the prior closest sounding for each event was taken to realize a principal component analysis (PCA) that is used to identify the leading patterns of the vertical structure of the atmosphere previously to a zonda wind event. These components were used to construct the index model. For the PCA an entry matrix of temperature (T) and dew point temperature (Td) anomalies for the standard levels between 850 and 300 hPa was build. The analysis yielded six significant components with a 94 % of the variance explained and the leading patterns of favorable weather conditions for the development of the phenomenon were obtained. A zonda/non-zonda indicator c can be estimated by a logistic multiple regressions depending on the PCA component loadings, determining a zonda probability index ĉ calculable from T and Td profiles and it depends on the climatological features of the region. The index showed 74.7 % efficiency. The same analysis was performed by adding surface values of T and Td from Mendoza Aero station increasing the index efficiency to 87.8 %. The results revealed four significantly correlated PCs with a major improvement in differentiating zonda cases and a reducing of the uncertainty interval.