{"id":20281,"date":"2015-12-18T12:59:16","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T12:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=20281"},"modified":"2015-12-28T16:31:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-28T16:31:03","slug":"meso-vortex-over-qinghai-lake-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/20281","title":{"rendered":"Meso-vortex over Qinghai Lake, China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We received the following notification on Twitter from Walt Clark:<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">great meso-B MCV over Qinghai Lake in first light himawari 2230-630+Z. tough to get a good image loop of it tho. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CIMSS_Satellite\">@CIMSS_Satellite<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Walt Clark (@waclark4) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/waclark4\/status\/677942405740515328\">December 18, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Good catch Walt, and thanks for the heads-up! Using the Location Search feature of <a href=\"http:\/\/realearth.ssec.wisc.edu\/\"><strong>RealEarth<\/strong><\/a>, we found that Qinghai Lake is located in central China, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Qinghai_Lake\"><strong>Wikipedia<\/strong><\/a> told us it&#8217;s also the largest lake in China. (Qinghai Lake is slightly smaller than the Great Salt Lake in Utah)  The mesoscale vortex can be seen over the lake on a Himawari-8 true-color Red\/Green\/Blue (RGB) image at 0400 UTC on 18 December 2015 <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a class=\"thumbnail\" href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/151218_0400utc_himawari8_truecolor_rgb_Qinghai_Lake_China_zoom_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/151218_0400_himawari8_rgb_Qinghai_Lake_China_zoomout_2.jpg\" alt=\"Himawari-8 true-color image at 0400 UTC [click to play zoom-in animation]\" width=\"480\" height=\"291\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Himawari-8 true-color image at 0400 UTC [click to play zoom-in animation]<\/p><\/div>Daytime Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 \u00b5m, 0.5-km resolution) images <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em> showed the feature spinning cyclonically over Qinghai Lake as it slowly migrated northward.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a class=\"thumbnail\" href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/151218_himawari8_visible_Qinghai_Lake_China_mesovort_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/960x1280_AHIM08_B3_CHINA_MESOVORT_VIS_2015352_032000_0001PANEL.GIF\" alt=\"Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) images [click to play animation]\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) images [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>However, we&#8217;re not certain that this was a <a href=\"http:\/\/rammb.cira.colostate.edu\/training\/visit\/training_sessions\/mesoscale_convective_vortices\/\"><strong>Mesoscale Convective Vortex<\/strong><\/a> (MCV); while there was some convection over the mountains north of the lake during the preceding nighttime hours on 17 December which exhibited cloud-top IR brightness temperatures around -40\u00ba C (<a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/151217-18_himawari8_ir_Qinghai_Lake_China_anim.gif\"><strong>color-enhanced Himawari-8 Infrared animation<\/strong><\/a>), it appears more likely that this might have been a convective outflow boundary from those mountain thunderstorms which became trapped within the &#8220;bowl&#8221; of high terrain that nearly surrounds the lake. A long animation which concatenates the earlier nighttime Himawari-8 Infrared (10.4 \u00b5m, 2-km resolution) and the later daytime Himawari-8 Visible (0.64 \u00b5m, 0.5-km resolution) images is shown below. It is difficult to trace the origin of the vortex feature as being from the aforementioned convective activity.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a class=\"thumbnail\" href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/151217-18_himawari8_ir_visible_Qinghai_Lake_China_mesovort_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/960x1280_AHIM08_B13_CHINA_MESOVORT_IR_GRAY_2015352_005000_0001PANEL.GIF\" alt=\"Himawari-8 Infrared (10.4 \u00b5m) and Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) images [click to play animation]\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Himawari-8 Infrared (10.4 \u00b5m) and Visible (0.64 \u00b5m) images [click to play animation]<\/p><\/div>The meso-vortex was also seen on a MODIS true-color RGB image from the Aqua satellite, which did an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ssec.wisc.edu\/datacenter\/aqua\/archive\/ASIA\/2015_12(335-365)\/ASIA2015_12_18_352_aqua.gif\"><strong>overpass<\/strong><\/a> of the region around 0642 UTC <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em>. While some small patches of ice did appear to be forming along the edges of Qinghai Lake, it remained predominantly ice-free (unlike the smaller and presumably more shallow Har Lake to the northwest, which looked to be totally ice-covered).<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/151218_aqua_modis_truecolor_Qinghai_Lake_mesovort_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2015\/12\/151218_aqua_modis_truecolor_Qinghai_Lake_mesovort_anim.gif\" alt=\"Aqua MODIS true-color RGB image, with Google maps background [click to enlarge]\" width=\"480\" height=\"291\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aqua MODIS true-color RGB image, with Google maps background [click to enlarge]<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We received the following notification on Twitter from Walt Clark: great meso-B MCV over Qinghai Lake in first light himawari 2230-630+Z. tough to get a good image loop of it tho. @CIMSS_Satellite \u2014 Walt Clark (@waclark4) December 18, 2015 Good catch Walt, and thanks for the heads-up! Using the Location Search feature of RealEarth, we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":20285,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,12,53,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-himawari-8","category-modis","category-real-earth","category-redgreenblue-rgb-images"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20281"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20322,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20281\/revisions\/20322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}