An Example of Uncertainty in Sea Level Pressure Reduction

Abstract

Abstract Difficulty analyzing mesoscale features in California and Nevada for a 1991 case study prompted a review of techniques for sea level pressure (SLP) reduction and an evaluation of the performance of the various techniques for the U.S. west coast states at 0000 UTC 30 November 1991. The objective of any SLP reduction procedure is to provide a pressure field that portrays meteorological features rather than terrain features, a difficult goal to meet in this region given the steep terrain gradients on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada range. The review and evaluation are performed both for techniques applicable at individual stations and for techniques applicable at grid points in a model analysis or forecast. When using station data, one would like to perform a manual or objective analysis of SLP with the greatest number of stations possible by adding stations that report only altimeter setting to the stations that report both SLP and altimeter setting. The results of the comparison show that ...