{"id":7611,"date":"2011-02-14T21:45:11","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T21:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/?p=7611"},"modified":"2011-02-18T21:33:10","modified_gmt":"2011-02-18T21:33:10","slug":"mountain-wave-turbulence-in-the-western-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/archives\/7611","title":{"rendered":"Mountain wave turbulence in the western US"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<div style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a class=\"thumbnail\" href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2011\/02\/110214_goes_wv_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" \" title=\"GOES water vapor images with pilot reports of turbulence (click image to play animation)\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2011\/02\/US_Water_Vapor_20110214_1901.png\" alt=\"GOES water vapor images with pilot reports of turbulence (click image to play animation)\" width=\"480\" height=\"459\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">GOES water vapor images with pilot reports of turbulence (click image to play animation)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Strong southwesterly winds aloft interacting with the rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada mountain range resulted in a number of pilot reports of mountain waves which were producing moderate turbulence over parts of the western US on <a title=\"14 February 2011 daily weather map\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov\/dailywxmap\/index_20110214.html\"><strong>14 February 2011<\/strong><\/a>. AWIPS images of a composite of 8-km resolution GOES-11 <em>(GOES-West)<\/em> and 4-km resolution GOES-13 <em>(GOES-East)<\/em> water vapor imagery <em><strong>(above)<\/strong><\/em> revealed a classic mountain wave signature just downwind of the Sierra Nevada. The &#8220;seam&#8221; between GOES-11 and GOES-13 is fairly evident on the AWIPS water vapor image composite, mainly due to the difference in spatial resolution.<\/p>\n<p>A comparison of the mountain waves on the 8-km resolution GOES-11 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor image versus the corresponding 1-km resolution Terra MODIS 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor image <em><strong>(below)<\/strong><\/em> demonstrates the clear advantage of improved spatial resolution for detecting the areal coverage of such features.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2011\/02\/110214_modis_goes_wv_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"GOES water vapor image + MODIS water vapor image (with pilot reports of turbulence)\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2011\/02\/110214_modis_goes_wv_anim.gif\" alt=\"GOES water vapor image + MODIS water vapor image (with pilot reports of turbulence)\" width=\"480\" height=\"459\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">GOES water vapor image + MODIS water vapor image (with pilot reports of turbulence)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>About 1.5 hours later, a similar comparison of the mountain waves on the 8-km resolution GOES-11 6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m  water vapor image versus the corresponding 1-km resolution Aqua MODIS  6.5 \u00c2\u00b5m water vapor image can be seen below. Note that there is less &#8220;striping&#8221; <em>(due to detector degradation)<\/em> on the Aqua MODIS water vapor image &#8212; Aqua is a newer satellite , launched in 2002 (Terra was launched in 1999) .<em><strong> <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2011\/02\/110214_modis_goes_wv_2_anim.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"GOES water vapor image + MODIS water vapor image (with pilot reports of turbulence)\" src=\"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2011\/02\/110214_modis_goes_wv_2_anim.gif\" alt=\"GOES water vapor image + MODIS water vapor image (with pilot reports of turbulence)\" width=\"480\" height=\"460\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">GOES water vapor image + MODIS water vapor image (with pilot reports of turbulence)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Strong southwesterly winds aloft interacting with the rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada mountain range resulted in a number of pilot reports of mountain waves which were producing moderate turbulence over parts of the western US on 14 February 2011. AWIPS images of a composite of 8-km resolution GOES-11 (GOES-West) and 4-km resolution GOES-13 (GOES-East) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,18,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-goes-11","category-goes-13","category-modis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7611","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=7611"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7624,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7611\/revisions\/7624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cimss.ssec.wisc.edu\/satellite-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}