Marshall Shepherd et al 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 024012 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/4/2/024012
Marshall Shepherd1, Dev Niyogi2 and Thomas L Mote1
Show affiliationsUsing rain gauge and satellite-based rainfall climatologies and the NOAA Storm Prediction Center tornado database (1952–2007), this study found a statistically significant tendency for fall–winter drought conditions to be correlated with below-normal tornado days the following spring in north Georgia (i.e. 93% of the years) and other regions of the Southeast. Non-drought years had nearly twice as many tornado days in the study area as drought years and were also five to six times more likely to have multiple tornado days. Individual tornadic events are largely a function of the convective-mesoscale thermodynamic and dynamic environments, thus the study does not attempt to overstate predictability. Yet, the results may provide seasonal guidance in an analogous manner to the well known Sahelian rainfall and Cape Verde hurricane activity relationships.
92.60.hk Convection, turbulence, and diffusion
92.60.Jq Water in the atmosphere (humidity, clouds, evaporation, precipitation)
Issue 2 (April-June 2009)
Received 10 February 2009, accepted for publication 16 June 2009
Published 24 June 2009
Marshall Shepherd et al 2009 Environ. Res. Lett. 4 024012
A T Charlie Johnson et al 2006 Semicond. Sci. Technol. 21 S17
R Butté et al 2007 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 40 6328
K T Tsen et al 2007 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 19 472201
P A Lewis et al 2001 Nanotechnology 12 231