1977 Volume 55 Issue 6 Pages 586-605
To analyse features of maritime cold fronts measurements of many meteorological variables were made at six levels from the NCAR Electra aircraft flying through a cold front moving southeast from Okinawa during AMTEX. The front was relatively weak and atypical in that it was double and no middle or high clouds existed above a stratocumulus shield at 2km. The history of the fronts is given and the structure described. Characteristics of several frontal air masses are determined from flight and radiosonde data. Mixing, primarily vertical by cumulus convection, between the various air masses is demonstrated. Regions of upward motion ahead of the fronts located by aircraft inertial navigation system measurements and from divergence of winds agreed well and confirmed the double structure of the front. Local areas of frontogenesis are found ahead of each front. Averaged over the entire system, weak frontolysis was occurring primarily as a consequence of the warming of air behind the fronts. Both positive and negative fluxes of heat and water vapor occurred within the frontal zone as a result of turbulent transport, direct cumulus convection, over-shotting of equilibrium levels, and subsidence of cloud remanents. Normalization of velocity spectra in the frontal zone by height times energy dissipation and frequencies by height over aircraft speed gives a universal spectral pattern indicating the dominance of generation of turbulent energy by shearing processes. Spectra observed within cold air behind the front fits the shapes and non-dimensional values characteristic of well-mixed air heated from below and capped by an inversion, indicating the dominance of heating as a source of turbulent energy.