The Analysis and Simulation of an Advection FogEvent in Beijing

A dense advection fog event occurs in Beijing on 21 February 2007. Since the fog occurs during the Chinese Spring Festival, this unexpected event makes a mess of the traffic. The surface observation data of the Beijing Capital International Airport, the auto-observations across Beijing area and NCEP 1°×1°analysis are used to analyze this process. And a numerical simulation is made using the meso-scale model MM5. The analyses and simulation show that weak convergent low is the primary weather pattern of the dense fog event. There is no obvious cold air intruding and the atmospheric stratification is relatively stable prior to the event. Meanwhile there is a meso-scale surface convergent line, at the south of which moisture is transported to Beijing area by the southeast airflow. These weather conditions offer good basic conditions for the night-fog formation. The simulation of this advection fog event indicates that the simulated fog area and the motion are basically coincided with the actual situation, which show the potential ability of MM5 to forecast advection fog event. And further analyses shows that 6-7 h before the occurrence of the fog, inversion layer first occurs in the ground layer, and then the inversion layer top continuously rises and becomes thicker. Moreover, the coincidence or the separation of temperature curve and dew-point curve correlate with the occurrence or dissipation of fog. Besides, there is obvious horizontal temperature gradient at the front edge of the fog area, and at the surface layer southeast airflow is blocked by the fog and turns to west, then converges at the front edge of the fog. In addition, below 930 hPa, at the front edge of the vertical temperature inversion area, there is a vertical thermodynamic circulation with downdraft at the fog area and updraft at the front edge of the fog area. During the event, there is a complete warm center above the fog area, thick inversion layer and weak updraft. Such stable situation causes the long duration of the fog. And during the dissipation of fog, the large area of fog is separated into patches. In some areas where temperature rises faster, the stronger ascending motion destroys the inversion, so the fog area reduces as a result.