Jack Dostalek
Jack Dostalek
Research Associate
Office: CIRA Room 003, Fort Collins
Phone: 970-491-8326
Fax: 970-491-8241
Email:
Mailing Address:
Jack Dostalek
Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere
Colorado State University
1375 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1375
Biography

My work focuses on applying satellite data to weather analysis and forecasting and includes topics at polar, midlatitude, and tropical latitudes.

Polar regions are sparsely sampled by surface and upper-air observations, and data from polar-orbiting satellites can be of help. Work here has been to use temperature profiles derived from AMSU data to estimate the wind field over the Arctic.

During the winter in the United States, midlatitude cyclones produce most of the inclement weather. GOES data is being used in the study of these systems, including estimating the central pressure of systems still over the northeast Pacific Ocean, forecasting the lifting out of stationary lows over the southwestern United States, and monitoring the upper-level potential vorticity structure of midlatitude cyclones.

Tropical cyclones form over the oceans which, like the Polar regions, contain few (if any) surface or upper-air observations. Here satellite data is currently being used as part of a tropical cyclone formation probability product.

Recent Work
Figure

Above: 500-mb heights and geostrophic winds derived from AMSU temperature soundings on 0000 UTC 17 December 2004. Height contours every 60 m. Half wind barb represents 2.5 ms-1, full wind barb 5 ms-1 and a pennant 25 ms-1. The height field is derived from the AMSU temperature profiles by integrating the hydrostatic equation down toward the surface from 100 mb. The boundary condition at 100 mb is supplied from the GFS analysis. Once the height field is obtained, a balance condition is used to derive the wind field. Here the geostrophic balance is shown, but the linear and nonlinear balance winds are also computed.

Selected Publications

Lindsey, D.T., D.W. Hillger, L.D. Grasso, J.A. Knaff, J.F. Dostalek,2006:  GOES climatology and analysis of thunderstorms with enhanced 3.9-µm reflectivity. Mon. Wea. Rev., 134, 2342–2353.

 Dostalek, J.F., J.F. Weaver, and L. Phillips, 2004: Aspects of a tornadic left-moving thunderstorm of 25 May 1999. Wea. Forecasting, 19, 614-626.
 
Dostalek, J.F., and T.J. Schmit, 2001: Total precipitable water measurements from GOES sounder derived product imagery. Wea. Forecasting, 16, 573-587.
 
Weaver, J.F., J.F. Dostalek, B.C. Motta, and J.F.W. Purdom, 1999: Severe thunderstorms on 31 May 1996: A satellite meteorology training case. National Weather Digest, 23,3-19.
 
Dostalek, J.F., J.F. Weaver, J.F.W. Purdom,and K.Y. Winston, 1997: Nighttime detection of low-level thunderstorm outflow using a GOES multispectral image product. Wea. Forecasting, 12, 947-950.
 
General Themes
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