Tagging moisture sources with Lagrangian and inertial tracers: application to intense atmospheric river events

Abstract

Two Lagrangian tracer tools are evaluated for studies on atmospheric moisture sources and pathways. In these methods, a moisture volume is assigned to each particle, which is then advected by the wind flow. Usual Lagrangian methods consider this volume to remain constant and the particle to follow flow path lines exactly. In a different approach, the initial moisture volume can be considered to depend on time as it is advected by the flow due to thermodynamic processes. In this case, the tracer volume drag must be taken into account. Equations have been implemented and moisture convection was taken into account for both Lagrangian and inertial models. We apply these methods to evaluate the intense atmospheric rivers that devastated (i) the Pacific Northwest region of the US and (ii) the western Iberian Peninsula with flooding rains and intense winds in early November 2006 and 20 May 1994, respectively. We note that the usual Lagrangian method underestimates moisture availability in the continent, while active tracers achieve more realistic results.