skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Interactions between cumulus convection and its environment as revealed by the MC3E sounding array

Journal Article · · Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022011· OSTI ID:1167427
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [1];  [3]
  1. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  2. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
  3. Stony Brook Univ., Stony Brook, NY (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

This study attempts to understand interactions between midlatitude convective systems and their environments through a heat and moisture budget analysis using the sounding data collected from the Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) in central Oklahoma. Distinct large-scale structures and diabatic heating and drying profiles are presented for cases of weaker and elevated thunderstorms as well as intense squall line and supercell thunderstorm events during the campaign. The elevated cell events were nocturnal convective systems occurring in an environment having low convective available potential energy (CAPE) and a very dry boundary layer. In contrast, deeper convective events happened during the morning into early afternoon within an environment associated with large CAPE and a near-saturated boundary layer. As the systems reached maturity, the diagnosed diabatic heating in the latter deep convective cases was much stronger and of greater vertical extent than the former. Both groups showed considerable diabatic cooling in the lower troposphere, associated with the evaporation of precipitation and low-level clouds. The horizontal advection of moisture also played a dominant role in moistening the lower troposphere, particularly for the deeper convective events, wherein the near surface southeasterly flow allows persistent low-level moisture return from the Gulf of Mexico to support convection. The moisture convergence often was present before these systems develop, suggesting a strong correlation between the large-scale moisture convergence and convection. As a result, sensitivity tests indicated that the uncertainty in the surface precipitation and the size of analysis domain mainly affected the magnitude of these analyzed fields rather than their vertical structures.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC00112704; AC52-07NA27344; AC02-98CH10886
OSTI ID:
1167427
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1266665
Report Number(s):
BNL-106289-2014-JA; LLNL-JRNL-653895; R&D Project: 2016-BNL-EE630EECA-Budg; KP1701000
Journal Information:
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Vol. 119, Issue 20; ISSN 2169-897X
Publisher:
American Geophysical UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 45 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (51)

A Technique for Maximizing Details in Numerical Weather Map Analysis journal August 1964
Objective Determination of Cloud Heights and Radar Reflectivities Using a Combination of Active Remote Sensors at the ARM CART Sites journal May 2000
Elevated Convection and Castellanus: Ambiguities, Significance, and Questions journal December 2008
An Operational Objective Analysis System journal October 1959
The Life Cycles of GATE Convective Systems journal July 1978
The Vertical Distribution of Heating in AMEX and GATE Cloud Clusters journal November 1989
Heat and Moisture Budgets of an Intense Midlatitude Squall Line journal January 1991
The Dynamics of Circulations within the Trailing Stratiform Regions of Squall Lines. Part I: The 10–11 June PRE-STORM System journal June 1995
A Summary of Convective-Core Vertical Velocity Properties Using ARM UHF Wind Profilers in Oklahoma journal October 2013
Precipitation Estimation from the ARM Distributed Radar Network during the MC3E Campaign journal September 2014
Baroclinicity Influences on Storm Divergence and Stratiform Rain: Subtropical Upper-Level Disturbances journal April 2009
Modeled and Observed Variations in Storm Divergence and Stratiform Rain Production in Southeastern Texas journal April 2012
A Five-Year Climatology of Elevated Severe Convective Storms in the United States East of the Rocky Mountains journal October 2007
The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) sounding network: operations, processing and analysis journal January 2014
Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) report April 2010
Structure and Properties of Madden–Julian Oscillations Deduced from DYNAMO Sounding Arrays journal October 2013
The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Cloud Profiling Radars: Second-Generation Sampling Strategies, Processing, and Cloud Data Products journal July 2007
Mesoscale Budgets of Heat and Moisture in a Convective System over the Central United States journal August 1984
Mechanisms of diurnal precipitation over the US Great Plains: a cloud resolving model perspective journal February 2009
Test of the Ogura-Cho Model on a-Prefrontal Squall Line Case journal September 1975
Kinematic and Thermodynamic Characteristics of the Flow over the Western Pacific Warm Pool during TOGA COARE journal March 1996
Heating, Moistening, and Rainfall over the Western Pacific Warm Pool during TOGA COARE journal November 1996
Accuracy assessment and correction of Vaisala RS92 radiosonde water vapor measurements journal January 2009
Dynamical Analysis of Outflow from Tornado-Producing Thunderstorms as Revealed by ATS III Pictures journal April 1971
Scale-Controlled Objective Analysis journal October 1987
Diurnal Variability of the Hydrologic Cycle in a General Circulation Model journal January 1991
Rainfall Estimation with a Polarimetric Prototype of WSR-88D journal April 2005
Heating Structures of the TRMM Field Campaigns journal July 2007
Effects of Persistent, Midlatitude Mesoscale Regions of Convection on the Large-Scale Environment during the Warm Season journal December 1996
Structure and Properties of Synoptic-Scale Wave Disturbances in the Intertropical Convergence Zone of the Eastern Atlantic journal January 1979
TOGA COARE: The Coupled Ocean—Atmosphere Response Experiment journal September 1992
Tropical Upper-Tropospheric Extended Clouds: Inferences from Winter MONEX journal July 1980
An Overview of the International H 2 O Project (IHOP_2002) and Some Preliminary Highlights journal February 2004
Impact of the convection triggering function on single-column model simulations journal June 2000
Intercomparison and evaluation of cumulus parametrizations under summertime midlatitude continental conditions journal April 2002
Developing long-term single-column model/cloud system–resolving model forcing data using numerical weather prediction products constrained by surface and top of the atmosphere observations journal January 2004
Impact of a revised convective triggering mechanism on Community Atmosphere Model, Version 2, simulations: Results from short-range weather forecasts journal January 2004
Simulations of midlatitude frontal clouds by single-column and cloud-resolving models during the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement March 2000 cloud intensive operational period journal January 2005
Developing large-scale forcing data for single-column and cloud-resolving models from the Mixed-Phase Arctic Cloud Experiment journal January 2006
Observed Large-Scale Structures and Diabatic Heating and Drying Profiles during TWP-ICE journal January 2010
CLOUDS AND MORE: ARM Climate Modeling Best Estimate Data: A New Data Product for Climate Studies journal January 2010
An intercomparison of cloud-resolving models with the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement summer 1997 Intensive Observation Period data journal January 2002
Modeling springtime shallow frontal clouds with cloud-resolving and single-column models journal January 2005
A Detailed Analysis of Typhoon Formation [台風発生の解析] journal January 1961
Determination of Bulk Properties of Tropical Cloud Clusters from Large-Scale Heat and Moisture Budgets journal May 1973
Evaluating NEXRAD Multisensor Precipitation Estimates for Operational Hydrologic Forecasting journal June 2000
Cracking the MJO nut: ZHANG ET AL.: CRACKING THE MJO NUT journal March 2013
Constructing Three-Dimensional Multiple-Radar Reflectivity Mosaics: Examples of Convective Storms and Stratiform Rain Echoes journal January 2005
Constrained Variational Analysis of Sounding Data Based on Column-Integrated Budgets of Mass, Heat, Moisture, and Momentum: Approach and Application to ARM Measurements journal June 1997
Objective Analysis of ARM IOP Data: Method and Sensitivity journal February 2001
Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) report April 2010

Cited By (6)

Improving diurnal rainfall phase over the Southern Great Plains in warm seasons by using a convective triggering design journal May 2019
Using regime analysis to identify the contribution of clouds to surface temperature errors in weather and climate models: Cloud-Regime Analysis and Surface Temperature Errors
  • Van Weverberg, Kwinten; Morcrette, Cyril J.; Ma, Hsi-Yen
  • Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 141, Issue 693 https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.2603
journal September 2015
The Summertime Precipitation Bias in E3SM Atmosphere Model Version 1 over the Central United States journal August 2019
Why do general circulation models overestimate the aerosol cloud lifetime effect? A case study comparing CAM5 and a CRM journal January 2017
Comparison of Vaisala radiosondes RS41 and RS92 at the ARM Southern Great Plains site journal January 2016
Regionally refined test bed in E3SM atmosphere model version 1 (EAMv1) and applications for high-resolution modeling journal January 2019

Similar Records

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES