[Rda-users] CISL Research Data Archive News

[rdahelp at ucar.edu]

The following news article has been posted by the CISL Research Data Archive at NCAR:

"1938 atmospheric river that caused the Los Angeles flood of 1938"

At least one person asked why I used a reanalysis that does not assimilate
satellite water vapor data to study an atmospheric river (AR) event.

That's a good question because the NOAA/CIRES Twentieth Century Global
Reanalysis Version 2c (20thCR V2c) only ingests three things: surface pressure,
sea ice coverage and sea surface temperature. The rest of the analysis is
generated by the physical models of NOAA's Global Forecast System (GFS)
[http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/global-forcast-system-gfs].

The short answer is that 20thCR V2c extends all the way back to 1851, which
means you can compare storm intensity between storms, including events that
occurred before the modern satellite era.

E.g. how does the AR event of 2004-2005 compare with one responsible for the Los
Angeles flood of 1938
[http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/la-river/los-angeles-flood-of-1938-channelization.html],
that felled thousands of buildings? Let's take a look.

Oops, I buried the ledge. NCAR RDA now has a blog
[http://ncarrda.blogspot.com/]! http://ncarrda.blogspot.com/ Click here to read
the rest of this post
[http://ncarrda.blogspot.com/2015/03/1938-atmospheric-river-that-caused-los.html].