The great plains low-level jet (LLJ) is the moisture source for much of the conterminous U.S., modulates patterns of precipitation in the central U.S. And is directly responsible for severe weather…

The great plains low-level jet (LLJ) is the moisture source for much of the conterminous U.S., modulates patterns of precipitation in the central U.S. And is directly responsible for severe weather events in the plains states, yet climate models vary substantially in the amount of moisture the LLJ transports to the great plains and southeast U.S. Because of uncertainty in model boundary layer physics. Our project, diagnostics for dynamics of low-level jets in gfdl AM4, will provide diagnostics on lljs worldwide, focusing on their existence, mechanism, and moisture transport. The first diagnostic will be a spatial/frequency distribution of the occurrence of the LLJ in order to validate atmospheric models ability to simulate IT. The second diagnostic will be a wind-veering plot in local time in order to test the formation mechanisms of the LLJ. The third diagnostic will concern the moisture flux of the LLJ: vector fields of monthly-average column water vapor flux. A fourth diagnostic will quantify the relationship between the moisture transported by the great plains LLJ and severe weather in the central U.S. Finally, the first three diagnostics will be made applicable to eighteen land-based lljs worldwide. All diagnostics will be adapted to AM4 by way of the model diagnostics task force-diagnostics package and source posted to github following open science prerogatives. The diagnostics will also be adapted to multiple atmospheric reanalyses in order to establish baseline metrics.