Exploring the applicability of the Q-G omega equation to meteorological case studies using IDV

Abstract

In the framework of quasi-geostrophic theory different formulations of the omega equation for the diagnosis of vertical motion in synoptic-scale weather systems have been proposed. Here we will focus on the traditional and the 𝑄⃗ -vector adiabatic forms of this equation and compute them using the Jython programming environment of the IDV software to assess their applicability to the qualitative analysis of vertical motion in various case studies. We will also attempt to compute the diabatic contribution to evaluate to what extent it is reasonable to neglect it when performing this quasi-geostrophic diagnostic