Interaction of Environmental Conditions and Vertical Transport in Deep Convection

The structure of deep convection and convective cloud fields is strongly impacted environmental conditions, which in turn are modified by convective clouds and these modifications impact downstream predictability. With the aid of large combined initial condition uncertainty and perturbed physics ensemble simulations (including CCN and INP perturbations) we first explore the impact of ambient conditions during deep convective system formation and lifetime on the vertical transport of trace substances. The modification of airmasses from inflow to outflow is diagnosed with sophisticated Lagrangian methods. For a supercell case from Central Europe, we find that the vertical airmass transport is strongly controlled by regional low-level convergence, while vertical water mass transport is additional strongly modulated by uncertainties in the model representation of cloud physics. Substantial cloud-cloud interactions are found to modify the regional response compared to the response of individual deep convective storms. Finally, we quantify the modification of regional environmental conditions by deep convection and investigate the impact on downstream cloud formation. Substantial downstream ensemble error growth in cloudiness and precipitation is associated with modified ambient moisture profiles and enhanced variability thereof.