Pineapple Express

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The Pineapple Express , also known as the Kona Storm , is a powerful high-altitude current ( jet stream ) that carries warm, humid air with it on its way from Hawaii to the California coast . On the coast there are mostly heavy downpours in connection with waves up to 4.50 m high .

The cause of these extreme events is a so-called polar front splitting in the middle troposphere , which occurs particularly frequently between October and April. Here, tropical warm air masses from Hawaii flow against polar or arctic air masses from Canada. Due to the strong atmospheric temperature gradient then arriving over the west coast of the USA, the warm, humid air is raised, which leads to heavy precipitation. At the latest when the storm front hits the high mountain ranges of the Rocky Mountains , rainfalls of tropical proportions can discharge (see sloping rain ). Under certain circumstances, this then accounts for half of the annual rainfall in the region.

In January 1995 , an incident lasting nearly two weeks resulted in the evacuation of low-lying areas in Long Beach and Santa Barbara . Tens of thousands of households were left without electricity; Undermined streets and foundations of houses, as well as torrential water masses, which took everything that got in their way, brought a total damage of 500 million US dollars .

Atmospheric rivers

Lithograph of K Street in Sacramento , California during the 1862 Flood

In 1998, Yong Zhu and Reginald E. Newell of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, using data from the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, discovered very narrow bands with extremely high moisture content. They named the phenomenon atmospheric rivers . This discovery was the basis for the United States Geological Survey's Arkstorm scenario , which is based on two Pineapple Express weather patterns and which tie in with the Great Flood of 1862 .

See also

Winch and wind systems

literature

  • RH Simpson: Evolution of the Kona Storm. A Suptropcial Cyclone . In: Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 1955, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 24-35
  • Mike Davis: Ecology of Fear. Los Angeles and living with disaster . 2nd Edition. Kunstmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-88897-225-6

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Yong Zhu and Reginald E. Newell (1998) A proposed algorithm for moisture fluxes from atmospheric rivers . Monthly Weather Review, 126, 725-735.
  2. ^ Website of the Earth System Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, accessed on September 28, 2013
  3. ↑ Philip Bethge (February 4, 2013) Sea of ​​Mud ; Der Spiegel 6/2013
  4. ↑ Summary of the ArkStorm scenario of the US Geological Survey from: Keith Porter, Anne Wein, Charles Alpers, Allan Baez, Patrick Barnard, James Carter, Alessandra Corsi, James Costner, Dale Cox, Tapash Das, Michael Dettinger, James Done, Charles Eadie , Marcia Eymann, Justin Ferris, Prasad Gunturi, Mimi Hughes, Robert Jarrett, Laurie Johnson, Hanh Dam Le-Griffin, David Mitchell, Suzette Morman, Paul Neiman, Anna Olsen, Suzanne Perry, Geoffrey Plumlee, Martin Ralph, David Reynolds, Adam Rose, Kathleen Schaefer, Julie Serakos, William Siembieda, Jonathan Stock, David Strong, Ian Sue Wing, Alex Tang, Pete Thomas, Ken Topping, directed by Chris Wills and Lucile Jones; Project manager Dale Cox (201) Overview of the ARkStorm scenario: US Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010-1312 , 183 pages plus attachments.

Web links

Commons : Pineapple Express  - album with pictures, videos and audio files