title: Lagrangian coherent structures along atmospheric rivers.
abstract: We show that filamentous Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) over the Northern Atlantic Ocean are closely linked to attracting Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) in the large scale wind field. The detected LCSs represent lines of attraction in the evolving flow with a significant impact on all passive tracers. Using Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponents, we extract LCSs from a two-dimensional flow derived from water vapor flux of atmospheric reanalysis data and compare them to the three-dimensional LCS obtained from the wind flow. We correlate the typical filamentous water vapor patterns of ARs with LCSs and find that LCSs bound the filaments on the back side. Passive advective transport of water vapor in the AR from tropical latitudes is potentially possible.
authors.affiliation: Group of Nonlinear Physics, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Garaboa-Paz
authors.affiliation: Group of Nonlinear Physics, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
authors.forename: Jorge
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Eiras-Barca
authors.affiliation: Institute of Mechanical Systems, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zürich, Leonhardtstrasse 21, CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Huhn
authors.affiliation: Group of Nonlinear Physics, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
authors.forename: Vicente
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Pérez-Muñuzuri