Aspectos termodinâmicos de um vórtice ciclônico de altos níveis sobre o Nordeste do Brasil.

Abstract

A Heat and moisture balance are commonly used in the study of atmospheric behavior in the presence of thermal and dynamic forcing. In 1973, some authors introduced a method for calculating what they called apparent heat source (Q1) and apparent moisture sink (Q2), obtained as a residual of large-scale heat and moisture balance. This work intends to investigate the characteristics of moisture and heat balance for the performance of a cyclonic vortex of upper levels (VCAN) in northeastern Brazil (NEB) that occurred during the period from 13 to 24 January 2011. The life cycle analysis of VCAN in terms of moisture and heat balance is of major importance, since the phase changes of water are important sources or sinks of energy for the tropical atmosphere, in which large amounts of condensation water vapour leads to release of large amount of energy, in the form of latent heat of condensation. The data set used in this study are of the ERA-Interim reanalysis of the European Centre for MediumRange Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) with a spatial resolution of 0.5°, along with the use of GOES-12 infrared-channel satellite imagery from the Division of Environmental Satellites (DSA/INPE), atmospheric apparatus information, estimated precipitation data the satellite Rainfall Tropical Measuring Mission (TRMM) , and weather station data of the surface of the National Institute of meteorology (INMET). The justification that resulted in the choice of this case VCAN took into account the fact this event was very intense during his time, life and it had very significant characteristics in the areas in which the center and its periphery acted. Points were defined analyses of Q1 and Q2, these points were defined as regions where the center and the edges of the vortex were acting during their life cycle. As a result it was observed that at the border point, there was a temporal evolution of Q1 and Q2 since the 1000 level up to 200 hPa, during the period of operation of the vortex at Bom Jesus da Lapa these parameters showed that due to the center of the VCAN act with more intensity about this site, the subsidence was dominant, especially in the days when this system was more intense, the negative peaks of Q1 around 400 hPa are indicative that the cold air comes from the center of the VCAN may inhibit the process of convection, and the peaks of Q2 around 700 hPa can be associated with shallow convection. For the city of Natal it was seen during the performance of the VCAN, Q1 and Q2 were well correlated, being this an indication that the process of formation of deep convection and the latent heat release were occuring.