declare, if thou hast understanding.
Job 38:4
"Of the world's various weather phenomena, fog is perhaps the most
mysterious, forming and dissipating near the ground with fluctuations in air temperature and humidity interacting with the terrain itself.
While fog presents a major hazard to transportation safety, meteorologists have yet to figure out how to forecast it with the precision they have achieved for precipitation, wind and other stormy events.
This is because the physical processes resulting in fog formation are extremely complex.
Now, in a recent paper published by the American Meteorological
Society, Pu and her colleagues have reported their findings from the Cold Fog Amongst Complex Terrain (CFACT) project, conceived to investigate the life cycle of cold fog in mountain valleys.
"Fog involves a lot of physics processes so it requires a computer model that can better represent all these processes," Pu said. "Because fog is clouds near the ground, it requires a high-resolution model to resolve it, so we need models at a very fine scale, which are computationally very expensive. The current models (relatively coarser in resolution) are not capable of resolving the fog processes, and we need to improve the models for better fog prediction."
The Heber Valley project homed in on cold-air fog which forms in
freezing temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, according to Pu. However by observing how these varying kinds of fog form and dissipate, the researchers are continuing to learn about the meteorological conditions and physical processes governing the formation of fog.
Besides fog IOPs, the variety of non-fog IOPs provided valuable observations for understanding
near-surface inversion,
ice crystal formation,
moisture advection
and transportation,
and stable boundary layers over complex terrain,
all of which are essential factors related to fog formation.
Comprehensive studies are ongoing for an improved understanding of cold fog over complex terrain."
ScienceDaily
ScienceDaily
