Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Dyer, Jamie

Committee Member

Dixon, Grady

Committee Member

Brown, Mike

Date of Degree

12-11-2009

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Geosciences

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Geosciences

Abstract

Tropical cyclones in the Atlantic basin often undergo a process called extratropical transition (ET) and transform from warm-core to cold-core systems while retaining strong winds, heavy rainfall, and large ocean waves. Infrared satellite imagery from channels 2 and 4 of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) were used to examine key structural changes, synoptic interactions, and loss of deep centered convection in order to determine onset and completion of ET. The primary indicator for ET onset in 75% of cases was found to be a persistent increase in storm asymmetry along with the appearance of warm frontogenesis in its northern region. Cold frontogenesis in the southern portion of the storm was the secondary indicator for declaring onset of ET. Completion of ET was marked by the loss of centered deep convection for all cases. The average ET transition time was 18 hours for 60% of the cases.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/15662

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