Exploring links between biomass burning smoke and tornado likelihood: From regional to large-eddy scale simulations

Abstract:

Biomass burning smoke from Central America can have the potential to enhance the likelihood of tornado occurrence and intensity in the SE US by changing the environment where tornadic storms form (Saide et al., GRL 2015). In this presentation we build over this study to further our understanding of these interactions on multiple dimensions: 1) Biomass burning smoke emissions are constrained using an inverse modeling technique to improve the representation of smoke loads and its impacts, 2) The representation of these smoke-tornado interactions are assessed when using a simplified aerosol scheme with the intent of introducing these feedbacks into numerical weather prediction in the future, 3) The occurrence of these interactions is investigated for other tornado outbreaks on the record to learn about their frequency and under what conditions they occur, and 4) Multi-scale simulations are performed from regional to tornado-resolving scales to assess the impact of smoke on the number of tornadoes formed and their EF intensity. Future steps will also be discussed.

The image below shows MODIS-Aqua satellite products for 27 April 2011 over the southeast US, Central America and the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), along with tornado tracks (red solid lines, thickness indicates the magnitude of the tornado reports , thickest=5, thinnest=1) for the period from April 26-28. The background is a true color image of the surface, clouds, and smoke, with yellow markers indicating fire detections and an iridescent overlay showing aerosol optical depth (AOD). Red, green and purple colors show high (1.0), medium (0.6) and low (0.1) AOD values. The article by Saide et al. (2015) shows that the increase in aerosol loads in the GoM is produced by fires in Central America, and this smoke is further transported to the southeast US where it can interact with clouds and radiation producing environmental conditions more favorable to significant tornado occurrence for the historical outbreak on 27 April 2011. Satellite true color image, AOD, and fire detection retrievals obtained from the NASA Level 1 and Atmosphere Archive and Distribution System (LAADS); Tornado reports obtained from the NOAA Storm Prediction Center; imagery courtesy of Brad Pierce NOAA Satellite and Information Service (NESDIS) Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR).