Evolution of Latent Heating Profiles in Two MC3E MCSs

Abstract:

Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) can be separated into convective and stratiform regions, with each region being associated with characteristic microphysical processes. As such, latent heating that occurs within convective and stratiform regions also has distinct vertical profiles. The latent heating in MCSs plays an important role in the (1) redistribution of energy and moisture from near the Earth’s surface to the upper atmosphere, (2) generation of buoyancy forcing for updrafts and downdrafts, and (3) creation of pressure waves that can propagate away from the MCS and alter the surrounding environment.

During the various stages of an MCS’s lifecycle, the latent heating vertical profiles within the convective and stratiform regions can change. To provide details on these dynamic latent heating profiles, results from two MCS simulations will be presented. Three-dimensional, cloud-resolving model simulations are performed using the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) to represent two MCS events from the Midlatitude Continental Convective Cloud Experiment (MC3E), which occurred in Spring 2011 in the Southern Great Plains of the United States. Comparisons of simulations against observations demonstrate that both simulations capture many features of the observed MC3E MCS events very well, such as precipitation, cold pool strength, and MCS cloud structure.

Precipitation regions within these simulations are broken up into convective and stratiform regions using a convective-stratiform separation algorithm. Region-specific latent heating vertical profiles are assessed both as averages over the simulation and as a function of time. In the middle and upper troposphere, convective region warming from latent heating decreases in magnitude throughout the MCS lifecycle, while stratiform warming increases in magnitude in a more confined region between 4 and 8 kilometers above the surface. In the lower troposphere, cooling from latent heating is dominant in both convective and stratiform regions, and the elevation of peak cooling increases with time. Such trends will be explained through the evolution of simulated microphysical processes.