Isolating the effects of mesoscale organization on large-scale wave, deep convection interaction

This study uses the System for Atmospheric Modeling (SAM) cloud system-resolving model (CSRM) to understand the effects of mesoscale organization on large-scale wave, deep convection interaction. The CSRM is coupled to linear wave dynamics to simulate wave-convection interactions. For simplicity, a single horizontal wavenumber is used at a time. In this set-up, temperature and moisture tendencies from the cumulus convection are computed at each time step and used to evolve the large-scale wave vertical velocity of the next time step. We explore how changes in the dimensionality, domain sizes, and wind shear, permit or forbid the mesoscale. Cloud fields are compared between model runs that permit vs. forbid the mesoscale, as well as times within a model run that have active vs. suppressed convection.