Convective available potential energy

About: Convective available potential energy is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 936 publications have been published within this topic receiving 43773 citations. The topic is also known as: CAPE.

Characteristics of East Central Florida Tornado Environments

Abstract: Climatological analyses indicate that strong morning tornadoes in the dry season, and weak afternoon tornadoes in the wet season, are significant forecast problems in east-central Florida. To address this issue, an analysis of upper-air soundings for Tampa Bay, West Palm Beach, and Cape Canaveral, Florida, released within ±2 hours of tornado touchdowns in the County Warning Area (CWA) of future National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Forecast Office (WFO), Melbourne, Florida, was completed. Mean dry- and wet-season tornado-proximity soundings to 200 mb were produced, and selected mean diagnostic parameters and variance statistics computed. Both dry- and wet-season tornado environments were associated with deep moist layers overlain by dry air, but no capping inversions. Dry-season cases were characterized by lower-tropospheric ow values well above normal, very low Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) and Bulk Richardson Number (BRN), strong speed and directional shear at low levels, a stro...

Synoptic pattern and severe weather associated with the wide convection over Southeast China during the summer monsoon period

Abstract: Based on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar observations, wide convection (WC) is defined as contiguous convective echoes over 40 dBZ, accompanied with a near surface rainfall area exceeding 1000 km2. In Southeast China, the maximal occurrence frequency of WC takes place over the flat land region in the central plain of East China during the summer monsoon period of 1998–2010. When WC occurs in this region, the 500-hPa atmospheric fields are categorized into three patterns by using an objective classification method, i.e., the deep-trough-control (DTr) pattern, the subtropical-high-maintenance (STH) pattern, and the typhoon-effect (Typh) pattern, which respectively accounts for 20.8%, 52.8%, and 26.4% of the total WC occurrences. The DTr pattern starts to emerge the earliest (16–31 May) and occurs the most often in the second half of June; the STH pattern has a significant occurrence peak in the first half of July; the Typh pattern occurs mostly in July and August. Nearly all WC occurrences in this region are associated with thunderstorms, due to large convective available potential energy and abundant moisture. Among the three synoptic patterns, the DTr pattern features the driest and coldest air in the region, leading to the least occurrences of short-duration heavy rainfall. Strong winds occur the most often under the DTr pattern, probably owing to the largest difference in air humidity between the mid and low troposphere. Hail at the surface is rare for all occurrences of WC, which is probably related to the humid environmental air under all weather patterns and the high (> 5 km) freezing level under the STH pattern.

Are trends in convective parameters over the United States and Europe consistent between reanalyses and observations?

Abstract: In this work, long-term trends in convective parameters are compared between ERA5, MERRA2, and observed rawinsonde profiles over Europe and the United States including surrounding areas. A 39-year record (1980–2018) with 2.07 million quality-controlled measurements from 84 stations at 0000 and 1200 UTC is used for the comparison, along with collocated reanalysis profiles. Overall, reanalyses provide similar signals to observations, but ERA5 features lower biases. Over Europe, agreement in the trend signal between rawinsondes and the reanalyses is better, particularly with respect to instability (lifted index), low-level moisture (mixing ratio) and 0–3 km lapse rates as compared to mixed trends in the United States. However, consistent signals for all three datasets and both domains are found for robust increases in convective inhibition (CIN), downdraft CAPE (DCAPE) and decreases in mean 0–4 km relative humidity. Despite differing trends between continents, the reanalyses capture well changes in 0–6 km wind shear and 1–3 km mean wind with modest increases in the United States and decreases in Europe. However, these changes are mostly insignificant. All datasets indicate consistent warming of almost the entire tropospheric profile, which over Europe is the fastest near-ground, while across the Great Plains generally between 2–3 km above ground level, thus contributing to increases in CIN. Results of this work show the importance of intercomparing trends between various datasets, as the limitations associated with one reanalysis or observations may lead to uncertainties and lower our confidence in how parameters are changing over time.

Pre-convective environment of pre-monsoon thunderstorms around Chennai – A thermodynamical study

Abstract: Pre-convective environment around Chennai during March – May 2003 has been studied using 0000 UTC upper air (RS/RW) and 0600 and 0900 UTC surface meteorological data. The study revealed the following results : (i) prevalence of positive (negative) dew point anomaly at 850 hPa, convective instability exceeding –6° K/km (convective stability, i.e., lapse rate less than –3° K/km) between 1000 and 700 hPa and positive (negative) relative humidity anomaly in the layer 850-500 hPa at 0000 UTC are associated with strong (no) convection (ii) SSEly to NNWly at 850 hPa is favourable for strong convection whereas ENEly to SSEly winds at 850 hPa are associated with no convection (iii) George’s K index, Deep Convective Index and Showalter’s stability index show better forecasting skill over the method of persistency (iv) Galway’s lifted index, SWEAT index, humidity index and Boyden index do not have forecasting skill over persistency and hence they are considered unsuitable for forecasting thunderstorm during pre-monsoon season (March – May) over Chennai and (v) forecast based on 0000 UTC convective available potential energy (CAPE) and convective inhibition energy (CINE) does not throw any light in improving our forecasting skill.

A statistical model for isolated convective precipitation events

Abstract: To study the diurnal evolution of the convective cloud field, we develop a precipitation cell tracking algorithm which records the merging and fragmentation of convective cells during their life cycles, and apply it on large eddy simulation (LES) data. Conditioning on the area covered by each cell, our algorithm is capable of analyzing an arbitrary number of auxiliary fields, such as the anomalies of temperature and moisture, convective available potential energy (CAPE) and convective inhibition (CIN). For tracks that do not merge or split (termed "solitary"), many of these quantities show generic, often nearly linear relations that hardly depend on the forcing conditions of the simulations, such as surface temperature. This finding allows us to propose a highly idealized model of rain events, where the surface precipitation area is circular and a cell's precipitation intensity falls off linearly with the distance from the respective cell center. The drop-off gradient is nearly independent of track duration and cell size, which allows for a generic description of such solitary tracks, with the only remaining parameter the peak intensity. In contrast to the simple and robust behavior of solitary tracks, tracks that result from merging of two or more cells show a much more complicated behavior. The most intense, long lasting and largest tracks indeed stem from multi-mergers - tracks involved in repeated merging. Another interesting finding is that the precipitation intensity of tracks does not strongly depend on the absolute amount of local initial CAPE, which is only partially consumed by most rain events. Rather, our results speak to boundary layer cooling, induced by rain re-evaporation, as the cause for CAPE reduction, CIN increase and shutdown of precipitation cells.