Analyzing 50 years of major fog events across the central coastal plain of Israel

TL;DR

This study analyzes 50 years of fog events in Israel's central coastal plain, revealing trends, synoptic conditions, and seasonal patterns, providing valuable long-term insights into regional fog behavior.

Contribution

It offers the first long-term analysis of fog events in this region, identifying dominant synoptic conditions and temporal trends over five decades.

Findings

Decreasing trend in fog frequency and duration

Red Sea Trough and Ridge are primary conditions for fog

Peak fog occurrence between March and June

Abstract

This report presents an analysis of 152 major fog events that have been occurring for five decades (1967-2017) across the central coastal plain of Israel. Analysis of the meteorological data shows that fog events in the experimental area predominantly occur under two sets of synoptic conditions - Red Sea Trough (44%) and Ridge (41%), while the incidence of fog events peaks between March and June. In particular, the results obtained indicate a decreasing trend in the number of fog events and their duration over time where the frequency of radiation fog has decreased over time when compared to the incidence of advection fog. This note provides a long-term analysis of data in a region that lacks reliable time series of this length, and highlight important insights for future research.