Hurricane Patricia Fine Display of Dines Compensation

There are many laws and theories that govern synoptic and mesoscale meteorology. However, one of my favorites has always been Dines Compensation. Essentially, as air converges at the surface, it is forced upward, where it is eventually diverged aloft. This is because very little air escapes through the tropopause into the stratosphere, and the height of the tropopause does not change much. Therefore the uplifted air must spread out somewhere below the tropopause. I’ve always found this concept fascinating (yes, I’m a proud nerd), and Hurricane Patricia is putting Dines Compensation on display quite well.

Hurricane Patricia is located just to the west of Mexico, and is currently a category 5 hurricane, packing wind speeds of up to 200 mph. The pressure inside Hurricane Patricia just dropped to a whopping 878 mb. This means there is strong convergence at the surface. This is displayed in the image below.

Dines compensation states that where convergence occurs at the surface, there must be divergence somewhere aloft. If we move up to the 500mb pressure level, we should see divergence. Lo and behold, the image below displays this expected divergence.

Want to see Dines Compensation in action yourself? Check out this link to view surface streamlines. Check out this link for 500mb streamlines.

Meteorology is awesome.