Understanding Simulated Causes of Damaging Surface Winds in a Derecho-Producing Mesoscale Convective System near the East China Coast Based on Convection-Permitting Simulations

A mesoscale convective system(MCS) occurred over the East China coastal provinces and the East China Sea on 30April 2021, producing damaging surface winds near the coastal city Nantong with observed speeds reaching 45 m s^(–1). A simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with a 1.5-km grid spacing generally reproduces the development and subsequent organization of this convective system into an MCS, with an eastward protruding bow segment over the sea. In the simulation, an east-west-oriented high wind swath is generated behind the gust front of the MCS. Descending dry rear-to-front inflows behind the bow and trailing gust front are found to feed the downdrafts in the main precipitation regions. The inflows help to establish spreading cold outflows and enhance the downdrafts through evaporative cooling. Meanwhile, front-to-rear inflows from the south are present, associated with severely rearward-tilted updrafts initially forming over the gust front. Such inflows descend behind(north of) the gust front, significantly enhancing downdrafts and near-surface winds within the cold pool. Consistently, calculated trajectories show that these parcels that contribute to the derecho originate primarily from the region ahead(south) of the east-west-oriented gust front, and dry southwesterly flows in the low-to-middle levels contribute to strong downdrafts within the MCS. Moreover, momentum budget analyses reveal that a large westward-directed horizontal pressure gradient force within the simulated cold pool produced rapid flow acceleration towards Nantong. The analyses enrich the understanding of damaging wind characteristics over coastal East China and will prove helpful to operational forecasters.

4-D Trajectory Prediction and Dynamic Planning of Aircraft Taxiing Considering Time and Fuel

Most of the traditional taxi path planning studies assume that the aircraft is in uniform speed,and the optimization goal is the shortest taxi time.Although it is easy to solve,it does not consider the changes in the speed profile of the aircraft when turning,and the shortest taxi time does not necessarily bring the best taxi fuel consumption.In this paper,the number of turns is considered,and the improved A*algorithm is used to obtain the P static paths with the shortest sum of the straight-line distance and the turning distance of the aircraft as the feasible taxi paths.By balancing taxi time and fuel consumption,a set of Pareto optimal speed profiles are generated for each preselected path to predict the 4-D trajectory of the aircraft.Based on the 4-D trajectory prediction results,the conflict by the occupied time window in the taxiing area is detected.For the conflict aircraft,based on the priority comparison,the waiting or changing path is selected to solve the taxiing conflict.Finally,the conflict free aircraft taxiing path is generated and the area occupation time window on the path is updated.The experimental results show that the total taxi distance and turn time of the aircraft are reduced,and the fuel consumption is reduced.The proposed method has high practical application value and is expected to be applied in real-time air traffic control decision-making in the future.