Assessment of the Base-State Substitution Idealized Modeling Technique

Base-state substitution (otherwise known as BSS) is a recently developed idealized modeling technique that approximates environmental heterogeneity by replacing portions or the entirety of the horizontally homogeneous base-state (as encapsulated by a single sounding) at a user-defined interval. The updated environment embodies both spatial and temporal changes to the environment, allowing the user to conduct controlled experiments in a more realistic setting as a result of the evolving environment.

Given the intent of BSS to provide a more accurate representation of changes in an inflow environment over the lifetime of a storm, it is of interest to determine the extent to which BSS is able to faithfully reproduce observed storm structure and behavior. This will be accomplished using a series of qualitative and quantitative comparisons between the May 29, 2012 Kingfisher supercell thunderstorm observed during the Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry Experiment (DC3) and BSS simulations of the storm. Comparisons of storm evolution, track, structure, and the distribution of various kinematic quantities (such as vorticity and updraft speed) will be made between the simulations and available dual-Doppler data throughout the lifetime of the storm. Statistical tests will then be used to quantify how well BSS is able to recreate the observed storm.