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Critical phenomena in atmospheric precipitation

Ole Peters and J. David Neelin
Nature Physics, 2, June, 2006.

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Abstract. (Submitted)
Critical phenomena near continuous phase transitions are typically observed on the scale of wavelengths of visible light. Here we report similar phenomena for atmospheric precipitation on scales of tens of kilometers. Our observations have important implications not only for meteorology but also for the interpretation of self-organized criticality (SOC) in terms of absorbing-state phase transitions, where feedback mechanisms between order- and tuningparameter lead to criticality. While numerically the corresponding phase transitions have been studied, we characterise for the first time a physical system believed to display SOC in terms of its underlying phase transition. In meteorology the term quasi-equilibrium (QE) refers to a state towards which the atmosphere is driven by slow large-scale processes and rapid convective buoyancy release. We present evidence here that QE, postulated two decades earlier than SOC, is associated with the critical point of a continuous phase transition and is thus an instance of SOC.

Citation. Peters, O. and J. D. Neelin, 2006: Critical phenomena in atmospheric precipitation. Nature Physics, 2, 393-396, doi:10.1038/nphys314.


Acknowledgments. This work was supported under National Science Foundation grant ATM-0082529 and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grants NA05OAR4311134 and NA04OAR4310013 (J.D.N. and O.P.) and the US Department of Energy (W-7405-ENG-35) (O.P.). We thank D. Sornette for connecting the authors, and the Remote Sensing Systems rain team for discussion. This is Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics contribution no. 6289.