In a recent journal article, Stalker and Knupp (2003) showed that the cell separation distance between two interacting convective cells for successful cell merger is 0.75 times the planetary boundary layer depth. This scaling was numerically determined for the limiting case of zero ambient wind or wind shear. Ambient wind shear influences were shown to increase this scaling when the interacting cells are oriented parallel to the mean ambient shear vector based upon the coarse resolution simulations of Stalker (1997). However, Stalker and Knupp (2003) indicated that further high resolution numerical experimentation is needed to verify this increased boundary layer scaling as a function of the ambient wind shear. This paper will present the results of several sensitivity experiments, using parallel three-dimensional regional atmospheric models, of the ambient shear on boundary layer scaling in the context of cell mergers.

This ongoing research at RESPR, along with the above-cited published research, can potentially be one of the many critical pieces of the atmospheric component of the hydrologic cycle. For example, such research can be used to build model parameterizations for the coarse-resolution general circulation models (GCMs).