17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions

17O-excess is a relatively new water isotope parameter that could potentially provide useful information about the hydrological cycle. Previous works focusing on 17O-excess in polar regions suggest that it primarily tracks moisture source relative humidity, but little is known about how to interpret...

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Main Authors: Sun, Chijun, Shanahan, Timothy, He, Shaoneng, Bailey, Adriana, Nusbaumer, Jesse, Hu, Jun, Hillman, Aubrey, Ornouski, Erika, Warner, Jacob, DeLong, Kristine
Other Authors: Earth Observatory of Singapore
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/175615
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1756152024-04-30T15:39:54Z 17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions Sun, Chijun Shanahan, Timothy He, Shaoneng Bailey, Adriana Nusbaumer, Jesse Hu, Jun Hillman, Aubrey Ornouski, Erika Warner, Jacob DeLong, Kristine Earth Observatory of Singapore Earth and Environmental Sciences Triple oxygen isotope Tropical cyclone 17O-excess is a relatively new water isotope parameter that could potentially provide useful information about the hydrological cycle. Previous works focusing on 17O-excess in polar regions suggest that it primarily tracks moisture source relative humidity, but little is known about how to interpret 17O-excess data in lower latitudes. Here we present quasi-hourly triple oxygen isotope data of precipitation collected from two tropical cyclones in Texas and Louisiana in 2020 to understand the impacts of environmental and meteorological processes on the 17O-excess of low-to mid-latitude precipitation. We find that at both hourly timescales and the event scale, 17O-excess is strongly correlated to changes in on-site rainfall intensity and relative humidity, which is consistent with the theory that the isotopic fractionation associated with rain re-evaporation lowers the 17O-excess of the remaining droplet. In addition, although evaporative conditions at the moisture source region may also influence 17O-excess of water vapor transported to the precipitation site, their impacts are likely overprinted by the post-condensation rain re-evaporation processes. Our results thus suggest that 17O-excess can be used as a proxy for local rather than source region evaporative conditions during tropical cyclones. Ministry of Education (MOE) National Research Foundation (NRF) Published version C.S. acknowledges the Advanced Study Program Postdoctoral Fellowship of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for support. NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. This research is supported by the National Research Foundation Singapore and the Singapore Ministry of Education under the Research Centres of Excellence initiative (Earth Observatory of Singapore contribution no. 519) to S.H., the National Science Foundation (AGS 1702271) and UT system‐CONACYT collaborative research grant (ConTex 2017‐33) to T.M.S. 2024-04-30T06:44:38Z 2024-04-30T06:44:38Z 2024 Journal Article Sun, C., Shanahan, T., He, S., Bailey, A., Nusbaumer, J., Hu, J., Hillman, A., Ornouski, E., Warner, J. & DeLong, K. (2024). 17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129(6), e2023JD039361-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2023JD039361 2169-897X https://hdl.handle.net/10356/175615 10.1029/2023JD039361 2-s2.0-85188081572 6 129 e2023JD039361 en Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres © 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. application/pdf
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Earth and Environmental Sciences
Triple oxygen isotope
Tropical cyclone
spellingShingle Earth and Environmental Sciences
Triple oxygen isotope
Tropical cyclone
Sun, Chijun
Shanahan, Timothy
He, Shaoneng
Bailey, Adriana
Nusbaumer, Jesse
Hu, Jun
Hillman, Aubrey
Ornouski, Erika
Warner, Jacob
DeLong, Kristine
17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions
description 17O-excess is a relatively new water isotope parameter that could potentially provide useful information about the hydrological cycle. Previous works focusing on 17O-excess in polar regions suggest that it primarily tracks moisture source relative humidity, but little is known about how to interpret 17O-excess data in lower latitudes. Here we present quasi-hourly triple oxygen isotope data of precipitation collected from two tropical cyclones in Texas and Louisiana in 2020 to understand the impacts of environmental and meteorological processes on the 17O-excess of low-to mid-latitude precipitation. We find that at both hourly timescales and the event scale, 17O-excess is strongly correlated to changes in on-site rainfall intensity and relative humidity, which is consistent with the theory that the isotopic fractionation associated with rain re-evaporation lowers the 17O-excess of the remaining droplet. In addition, although evaporative conditions at the moisture source region may also influence 17O-excess of water vapor transported to the precipitation site, their impacts are likely overprinted by the post-condensation rain re-evaporation processes. Our results thus suggest that 17O-excess can be used as a proxy for local rather than source region evaporative conditions during tropical cyclones.
author2 Earth Observatory of Singapore
author_facet Earth Observatory of Singapore
Sun, Chijun
Shanahan, Timothy
He, Shaoneng
Bailey, Adriana
Nusbaumer, Jesse
Hu, Jun
Hillman, Aubrey
Ornouski, Erika
Warner, Jacob
DeLong, Kristine
format Article
author Sun, Chijun
Shanahan, Timothy
He, Shaoneng
Bailey, Adriana
Nusbaumer, Jesse
Hu, Jun
Hillman, Aubrey
Ornouski, Erika
Warner, Jacob
DeLong, Kristine
author_sort Sun, Chijun
title 17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions
title_short 17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions
title_full 17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions
title_fullStr 17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions
title_full_unstemmed 17O-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions
title_sort 17o-excess in tropical cyclones reflects local rain re-evaporation more than moisture source conditions
publishDate 2024
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/175615
_version_ 1800916187220017152