DOMAIN-INDEPENDENT ATTRIBUTION .2. ITS VALUE IN THE VERIFICATION OF DYNAMICAL THEORIES OF FRONTAL WAVES AND FRONTOGENESIS

Theories of frontogenesis and frontal waves describe development in te rms of the interaction of a basic state or environmental flow with a f rontal flow. The basic-state flow may comprise a large-scale confluent -diffluent deformation field and/or an alongfront temperature gradient . The frontal flow is seen as evolving as a result of its interaction with the environmental flow. Such theories make specific predictions a bout the effect of the basic-state flow on the frontal how. To test th ese predictions, counterparts of the basic-state Bows and frontal Bows used in theoretical models must be extracted from atmospheric data. H ere the concept of attribution is used to identify such counterparts. In the present context, attribution refers to the process whereby a pa rt of the wind field is attributed to a part of the vorticity or diver gence field. It is mathematically equivalent to the process by which a part of a field of electric potential is associated with an element o f total charge density in electrostatics. The counterpart of the front al flow used in idealized models is identified as that part of the flo w attributable to the vorticity and divergence anomalies within the fr ontal region. The counterpart of the basic-state Bow is identified as that part of the flow attributable to vorticity and divergence anomali es outside the frontal region. Applications of the partitioning method are illustrated by diagnosing the flow associated with a North Atlant ic front. The way in which the partitioning method may be used to test some theories concerning the effect of large-scale deformation on fro ntal wave formation is described. The partitioning method's ability to distinguish frontogenesis due to environmental flow from that due to frontal flow is also discussed. The analyzed front is found to lie at an angle to the dilatation axis of the environmental flow. It is argue d that this feature must be common to all nonrotating finite length fr onts.