Exploring the Impact of Storm Relative Helicity on the Relationship Between Cold Pools and Tornadoes

It is well known that the development of tornado-like vortices in numerical simulations is sensitive to the characteristics of the surface cold pool.  The purpose of this study is to examine how that sensitivity varies as a function of storm relative environmental helicity.  The CM1 cloud model is used to perform a suite of idealized simulations with various initial low-level wind profiles at tornado-allowing grid spacing.  The shear profiles in these initial environments range from nearly unidirectional to highly curved.  Multiple simulations of each initial environment are performed in which the surface cold pool is altered by modifying the evaporation and melting rates within the microphysics parameterization scheme.  Results will focus on how the relationship between tornado duration/intensity and cold pool thermodynamic structure is affected by the low-level shear profile.