Elevated convection and tropospheric inertial instability: A connection?

The relationship between convection and tropospheric inertial instability remains uncertain. In this presentation, we examine one or more cases of banded elevated convection in the vicinity of weakly inertially stable/inertially unstable mid-tropospheric conditions in the northern United States (see figure, from 0900 UTC 20 July 2005, depicting negative absolute vorticity in the RUC model at 500 mb along the North Dakota-Canada border).

Using simple dynamical arguments, observations, and high-resolution modeling results, we examine the possibility that wind circulations associated with the instability were sufficient to trigger the convection.