Daily 1200 UTC sea-level pressure, 850-hPa height and temperature, and 500-hPa height fields are used in a compositing analysis to document the synoptic evolution of wintertime precipitation events over Montreal. Since there has been a bias in past studies towards analyzing extreme events, four precipitation intensity categories are defined. A summary of the findings are as follows: (i) Heavier precipitation events are associated with a ridge-trough couplet as opposed to a trough for lighter events. The magnitude of the downstream ridge is influenced by the strength of warm advection at the 850-hPa level. (ii) Differences in the intensity of precipitation can be related to preferred climatological storm tracks and possible moisture inflow from the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. (iii) A negative PNA pattern is associated with winter events lightest in magnitude.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.20953 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Fischer, Alexandre P. |
| Contributors | Gyakum, John R. (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001609632, proquestno: MQ50767, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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