Extreme heat is a leading cause of weather-related human mortality. The urban heat island (UHI) can magnify heat exposure in metropolitan areas. This study investigates the ability of a new MODIS-retrieved near-surface air temperature and humidity dataset to depict urban heat patterns over metropolitan Chicago, Illinois, during June–August 2003–13 under clear-sky conditions. A self-organizing m...

Using the guinea pig as a model host, we show that aerosol spread of influenza virus is dependent upon both ambient relative humidity and temperature. Twenty experiments performed at relative humidities from 20% to 80% and 5 degrees C, 20 degrees C, or 30 degrees C indicated that both cold and dry conditions favor transmission. The relationship between transmission via aerosols and relative hum...

Atmospheric water vapour is an essential ingredient of weather and climate. The key features of its distribution can be represented by kinematic models which treat it as a passive scalar advected by a prescribed flow and reacting through condensation. Condensation acts as a sink that maintains specific humidity below a prescribed, space-dependent saturation value. To investigate how the interpl...

Atmospheric water vapour is an essential ingredient of weather and climate. The key features of its distribution can be represented by kinematic models which treat it as a passive scalar advected by a prescribed flow and reacting through condensation. Condensation acts as a sink that maintains specific humidity below a prescribed, space-dependent saturation value. To investigate how the interpl...

This study presents an extended vertical grid for the regional atmospheric model COSMO, used for numerical weather prediction, reaching up to 33 km. The extended setup has been used to stably simulate eleven months in a domain covering central and northern Europe. Temperature and relative humidity have been validated using 5 radio sonde data in polar and temperate latitudes, focussing on the st...

Atmospheric water vapour is an essential ingredient of weather and climate. The key features of its distribution can be represented by kinematic models which treat it as a passive scalar advected by a prescribed flow and reacting through condensation. Condensation acts as a sink that maintains specific humidity below a prescribed, space-dependent saturation value. To investigate how the interpl...

The Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB) is a crucial component of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) sounding suite and a valuable contribution from Brazil to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Aqua mission. Its design and functionality are practically identical to that of the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit-B—proven on the latest National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra...

The potential for using high-resolution meteorological data from two operational numerical weather analyses (NWA) to diagnose and predict persistent contrail formation is evaluated using two independent contrail observation databases. Contrail occurrence statistics derived from surface and satellite observations between April 2004 and June 2005 are matched to the humidity, vertical velocity, wi...

Synoptic variability of low-cloud properties, temperature advection, and thermodynamic soundings of the trade wind boundary layer are analyzed, using the long data record from ocean weather station November (308N, 1408W). The variations in low-cloud amount at this subtropical site are most strongly correlated with variations in temperature advection, the stability of the lower troposphere, and ...

Wildfires are a major concern on the Iberian Peninsula, and the establishment of effective prevention and early warning systems are crucial to reduce impacts and losses. Fire weather indices are daily indicators of fire danger based upon meteorological information. However, their application in many studies is conditioned to the availability of sufficiently large climatological time series over...