UCSB Geography graduate student Sarah Harris took third place in the Graduate Paper Abstract competition at the 69th Annual Conference of the California Geographical Society that was held May 1-3, 2015 at Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. The conference featured “excellent research, exemplary cartography, educational workshops and, perhaps best of all, world-class fellowship for geographers from around the Golden State and beyond”.
Sarah’s abstract was titled “Characteristics of atmospheric rivers impacting southern California”: Throughout southern California (SCA) annual precipitation occurs from few storms per season and the landscape is prone to rainfall-induced hazards, therefore, changes to storm frequency or intensity may dramatically impact the region. Accurate precipitation forecasts are difficult to determine as rainfall is affected by phenomena such as atmospheric rivers (ARs). ARs are channels of water vapor that are associated with high-intensity precipitation along coastal regions due to orographic forcing. Characteristics of ARs impacting North America’s western coast are investigated through composite analyses. AR events are identified using the output from an AR identification algorithm. Composites of atmospheric characteristics are created for varying regions of landfall prior to, on the day of, and after AR landfall. ARs impacting SCA display different plume characteristics and wave train patterns throughout the AR life cycle compared to ARs that landfall further north suggesting that ARs impacting SCA differ in initiation mechanisms and structural qualities.
Editor’ note: Hats off to Sarah and many thanks to alumnus Zia Salim (PhD 2014), now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Cal State Fullerton, for bringing the above to our attention.
