The role of land-atmosphere interactions under heterogeneous surface conditions is investigated in order to identify mechanisms responsible for altering surface heat and moisture fluxes. Twelve coupled land surface – large eddy simulation scenarios with four different length scales of surface variability under three different horizontal wind speeds are used in the analysis. The base case uses L...

Latent class analysis is based on the assumption that within each class the observed class indicator variables are independent of each other. We explore a new Bayesian approach that relaxes this assumption to an assumption of approximate independence. Instead of using a correlation matrix with correlations fixed to zero we use a correlation matrix where all correlations are estimated using an i...

Several studies have pointed out the dependence of low-cloud feedbacks on the strength of the lower-tropospheric convective mixing. By analyzing a series of single-column model experiments run by a climate model using two different convective parametrizations, this study elucidates the physical mechanisms through which marine boundary-layer clouds depend on this mixing in the present-day climat...

We study the long term evolution of the relationship between the root mean square (rms) variability and flux (the " rms-flux relation ") for the black hole Cygnus X-1 as monitored from 1996 to 2003 with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). We confirm earlier results by Uttley & McHardy (2001) of a linear relationship between rms and flux in the hard state on time scales > 5 s reflecting in i...

The western Arabian Sea exhibits strong spatial variability in sea surface temperature (SST) during the southwest monsoon, with changes in SST that can exceed 58C over 200 km. Exploration of satellite-based and in situ data shows a strong connection between mesoscale SST features and changes in the atmospheric boundary layer. The fundamental relationship is that of weak (strong) wind velocities...

[1] Midlatitude cyclone tracks over the Southern Ocean are constructed for the 1999–2006 period using two surface data sets: European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) sea-level pressure analyses on one hand, and on the other hand modified analyses in which high-wavenumber pressure variability derived from scatterometer swaths has been injected with a wavelet-based method. A com...

Fair-weather data from the May–June 2002 International H2O Project (IHOP_2002) 46-km eastern flight track in southeast Kansas are compared to simulations using the advanced research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled to the Noah land surface model (LSM), to gain insight into how the surface influences convective boundary layer (CBL) fluxes and structure, and to evalua...

Eddy covariance measurements of the turbulent sensible heat, latent heat and carbon dioxide fluxes for 12 months (2011–2012) are reported for the first time for a suburban area in the UK. The results from Swindon are comparable to suburban studies of similar surface cover elsewhere but reveal large seasonal variability. Energy partitioning favours turbulent sensible heat during summer (midday B...

Analysis of the fifteen years of European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis suggests that the transition from dry to wet season in Southern Amazonia is initially driven by increases of surface latent heat flux. These fluxes rapidly reduce Convective Inhibition Energy (CINE) and increase Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), consequently providing favourable co...