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.

The role of stability and moisture in the diurnal cycle of convection over land

Abstract: SUMMARY The diurnal cycle of convection over land is investigated by a cloud-resolving model simulation. Three regimes of convection—dry, shallow, and deep—successively take place during daytime under the presence of substantial convective available potential energy. The convective inhibition (CIN) and the normalized saturation deficit (NSD) in the cloud-base layer are identified as the major two variables that characterize the cycle of the convective regimes. The surface heating during daytime leads to the development of a quasi-dry well-mixed convective planetary boundary layer (PBL). This yields a decrease of CIN while NSD remains steady. Shallow convection is initiated as soon as the CIN becomes lower locally than the vertical kinetic energy in the PBL. This timing also marks the minimum of CIN, both in local and in domain-mean senses. Then, detrainment of moisture from the cloud layer gradually moistens the low free troposphere, resulting in a NSD decrease. Finally, deep convection is triggered when sufficient moistening is realized, as measured by a NSD minimum. During deep convection, NSD rapidly increases and CIN increases. Once CIN has exceeded the vertical kinetic energy in the PBL, deep convection ceases.

Conditional Instability and Shear for Six Hurricanes over the Atlantic Ocean

Abstract: One hundred and thirty Omega dropwindsondes deployed within 500-km radius of the eye of six North Atlantic hurricanes are used to determine the magnitudes and trends in convective available potential energy, and 10–1500-m and 0–6-km shear of the horizontal wind as a function of radius, quadrant, and hurricane intensity. The moist convective instability found at large radii (400–500 km) decreases to near neutral stability by 75 km from the eyewall. Vertical shears increase as radius decreases, but maximum shear values are only one-half of those found over land. Scatter for both the conditional instability and the shear is influenced chiefly by hurricane intensity, but proximity to reflectivity features does modulate the pattern. The ratio of the conditional instability to the shear (bulk Richardson number) indicates that supercell formation is favored within 250 km of the circulation center, but helicity values are below the threshold to support strong waterspouts. The difference between these oce...

Uncertainty quantification and parameter tuning in the CAM5 Zhang‐McFarlane convection scheme and impact of improved convection on the global circulation and climate

Abstract: In this study, we applied an uncertainty quantification (UQ) technique to improve convective precipitation in the global climate model, the Community Atmosphere Model version 5 (CAM5), in which the convective and stratiform precipitation partitioning is very different from observational estimates. We examined the sensitivity of precipitation and circulation to several key parameters in the Zhang-McFarlane deep convection scheme in CAM5, using a stochastic importance-sampling algorithm that can progressively converge to optimal parameter values. The impact of improved deep convection on the global circulation and climate was subsequently evaluated. Our results show that the simulated convective precipitation is most sensitive to the parameters of the convective available potential energy consumption time scale, parcel fractional mass entrainment rate, and maximum downdraft mass flux fraction. Using the optimal parameters constrained by the observed Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, convective precipitation improves the simulation of convective to stratiform precipitation ratio and rain-rate spectrum remarkably. When convection is suppressed, precipitation tends to be more confined to the regions with strong atmospheric convergence. As the optimal parameters are used, positive impacts on some aspects of the atmospheric circulation and climate, including reduction of the double Intertropical Convergence Zone, improved East Asian monsoon precipitation, and improved annual cyclesmore » of the cross-equatorial jets, are found as a result of the vertical and horizontal redistribution of latent heat release from the revised parameterization. Positive impacts of the optimal parameters derived from the 2 simulations are found to transfer to the 1 simulations to some extent.« less

The Impact on Simulated Storm Structure and Intensity of Variations in the Mixed Layer and Moist Layer Depths

Abstract: The sensitivities of convective storm structure and intensity to variations in the depths of the prestorm mixed layer, represented here by the environmental lifted condensation level (LCL), and moist layer, represented by the level of free convection (LFC), are studied using a three-dimensional cloud model containing ice physics. Matrices of simulations are generated for idealized environments featuring both small and large LCL = LFC altitudes, using a single moderately sheared curved hodograph trace in conjunction with convective available potential energy (CAPE) values of either 800 or 2000 J kg−1, with the matrices consisting of all four combinations of two distinct choices of buoyancy and shear profile shape. For each value of CAPE, the LCL = LFC altitudes are also allowed to vary in a separate series of simulations based on the most highly compressed buoyancy and shear profiles used for that CAPE, with the environmental buoyancy profile shape, subcloud equivalent potential temperature, subcl...

Changes in Convective Available Potential Energy and Convective Inhibition under Global Warming

Abstract: Atmospheric convective available potential energy (CAPE) is expected to increase under greenhouse gas–induced global warming, but a recent regional study also suggests enhanced convective i...