Tuesday, 13 January 2004
The importance of moisture profile with vertical wind shear in the dynamics of mid-latitude squall lines
Room 4AB
Tetsuya Takemi, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan
Poster PDF
(601.1 kB)
Various aspects of mid-latitude squall lines have been widely
investigated by many scientists through observations, theoretical
analyses, and numerical modeling. The interaction between surface
cold-air pool and environmental vertical wind shear is commonly
recognized as an important mechanism for the development of squall
lines. Rotunno et al. (1988) proposed a theory for the role of that
interaction in the development of squall lines, and more recently
Weisman and Rotunno (2002) have confirmed that the theory is valid in
their systematic numerical experiments. In addition to the
cold pool-vertical shear interaction, the stability is also known to
significantly affect the organization modes of mesoscale convective
systems (Weisman and Klemp 1984). Based on such past studies, this
study focuses mainly on the moisture profile (which has strong ties
with the stability) and investigates the effects of moisture profile
as well as vertical wind shear on the development of squall lines in
mid-latitude environments by performing three-dimensional numerical
experiments with various wind and humidity profiles. The Weather
Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model was used for the numerical
experiments. In this study, a microphysics parameterization including
ice phase was employed in order to promote convection development even
in drier environments.
Setting the boundary-layer moisture content to 14 g/kg, we reproduced
the similar features of squall lines to the study of Weisman and
Rotunno (2002). Decreasing the boundary-layer moisture content, the
amounts of water condensates produced by convection also decreased;
however, an intense surface cold pool developed in the drier
environments and thus maintained the squall-line system by interacting
with the low-level vertical wind shear. In the drier conditions,
squall lines were not sustained for a long period when the shear layer
was elevated above the boundary layer. In moister conditions, the
level of the shear layer did not significantly affect the development
of squall lines, because minimum amount of lifting would be required
in such conditions. Since the strong, upright lifting will be produced
in an optimal condition in which there is a dynamical balance between
the cold-pool circulation and low-level vertical shear, the
interaction mechanism proposed in the Rotunno et al.'s theory is more
critically important in the environments with lower CAPE and higher
CIN.
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