This study conducted synoptic and mesoscale analyses to understand the cause of Japan Tsukuba tornado development, which occurred at 0340 UTC 6 May 2012. Prior to the tornado occurrence, there was a circular jet stream over Japan, and the surface was moist due to overnight precipitation. The circular jet stream brought cold and dry air to the upper-level atmosphere which let strong solar radiation heat the ground with clearing of sky cover. A tornadic supercell developed in the area of potentially unstable atmosphere. Sounding data at Tateno showed a capping inversion at 900 hPa at 0000 UTC 6 May. Strong insolation in early morning hours and removal of the inversion instigated vigorous updraft with rotation due to vertical shear in the upper-level atmosphere. This caused multiple tornadoes to occur from 0220 to 0340 UTC 6 May 2012. When comparing Tateno’s climatological temperature and dew-point temperature profile on the day of event, the mid-level atmosphere was moister than typical sounding in the region. This study showed that tornado development in Tsukuba was caused by a combination of (a) topography and potential vorticity anomaly, which increased vorticity over the Kanto Plain; (b) vertical shear, which produced horizontal vortex line; and c) thermal instability, which triggered supercell and tilted the vortex line in the vertical.

The climatological study of temperature inversion was conducted at the Tsukuba of Japan during the cold half year, the periods of which were both from October 1981 through March 1982 and from October 1982 through March 1983. Meteorological phenomena were observed to appear both from 10m to 200m above the ground and from the surface to 300hPa. The data collected from those phenomena were analyzed in terms of statistics, and investigated from a synoptic point of view. The results are as follow. The dispersion of the surface inversion happens right after sunrise through the whole period. The higher the upper layer is, the later that happens. Up to a height of 200m, the wind speed at a height of 25m has the greatest effect on temperature, but on the other hand the wind speed at a height of 10m has the greatest effect on inversion intensity.