Studies of Contrasting Summer Weather Patterns
in Northern California
Faculty Advisors: Oswaldo Garcia and Dave Demsey
Graduate Advisor: Elizabeth Frieberg
The weather of San Francisco and the California coast during the summer tends to be cool and cloudy for most of the day. The summer winds come mostly from the ocean and can be very strong during the afternoon. By September, the weather occasionally turns warmer, with mostly clear skies and low humidity. During the warm periods, the winds tend to blow offshore, from the land toward the ocean. In this project, we monitor the weather conditions in northern California from August to October 2004 to better understand how and why the weather in San Francisco changes from cloudy and cool to clear and warm and back again. We analyze the regional patterns of atmospheric pressure and cloud cover using weather data and satellite pictures available at the Weather Graphics and Simulation Laboratory at San Francisco State University and other data sources available over the Internet. Special case studies of particularly warm/clear and cool/cloud events will be discussed.
Weather
forecasting group with their poster at the 2004 AGU meeting.