University of Miami (USA) discovered a new type of storms that they called atmospheric lakes. The opening of the researchers reported at the annual conference of the American Geophysical Society.
Atmospheric lakes are formed several times a year over the western part of the Indian Ocean in the equator area and move towards Africa. Air masses, suspended by water vapor to the pressure of 50 millimeters of mercury pillars, are separated from the bulk of wet air and exist for at least a week, having fallen into the eastern African coast. “Lakes” differ from the usual atmospheric rivers of water vapor, which continuously flow from the source to the shore, the fact that they are a separate drifting mass of moisture.
As noted by the Edition of Science Alert, meteorologists have discovered 17 atmospheric lakes in five years, which were formed within 10 degrees of the latitude of the equator and existed more than six days. Probably these masses are formed in other regions of the Earth, where they turn into tropical cyclones.
Researchers plan to determine the mechanism that causes atmospheric lakes to separate from conventional wet air masses, continuously moving to the shores of Africa. This may be due to the overall structure of the winds in the region defined by the global climate, or the masses themselves generate local winds and are “self-deviating”. In the first case, the global climate change can affect the atmospheric lakes, changing the amount of precipitation over the east coast of Africa.