Changes in the convective population and thermodynamic environments in convection-permitting regional climate simulations over the United States

By Kristen L. Rasmussen, Andreas F. Prein, R. Rasmussen, Kyoko Ikeda, Changhai Liu. Climate Dynamics, 2017

193 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Novel high-resolution convection-permitting regional climate simulations over the US employing the pseudo-global warming approach are used to investigate changes in the convective population and thermodynamic environments in a future climate. Two continuous 13-year simulations were conducted using (1) ERA-Interim reanalysis and (2) ERA-Interim reanalysis plus a climate perturbation for the RCP8.5 scenario. The simulations adequately reproduce the observed precipitation diurnal cycle, indicating that they capture organized and propagating convection that most climate models cannot adequately represent. This study shows that weak to moderate convection will decrease and strong convection will increase in frequency in a future climate. Analysis of the thermodynamic environments supporting convection shows that both convective available potential energy (CAPE) and convective inhibition (CIN) increase downstream of the Rockies in a future climate. Previous studies suggest that CAPE will increase in a warming climate, however a corresponding increase in CIN acts as a balancing force to shift the convective population by suppressing weak to moderate convection and provides an environment where CAPE can build to extreme levels that may result in more frequent severe convection. An idealized investigation of fundamental changes in the thermodynamic environment was conducted by shifting a standard atmospheric profile by ± 5 °C. When temperature is increased, both CAPE and CIN increase in magnitude, while the opposite is true for decreased temperatures. Thus, even in the absence of synoptic and mesoscale variations, a warmer climate will provide more CAPE and CIN that will shift the convective population, likely impacting water and energy budgets on Earth.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/10ed69790301955bb00a494b3179f6cd539d18ac

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Citations in the corpus

Confronting the Challenge of Modeling Cloud and Precipitation Microphysics (2020, methodology): “…configurations have also been used recently for regional climate modeling (e.g.,Hohenegger et al., 2008; Kendon et al., 2012; Prein et al., 2015; Rasmussen et al., 2011, 2017; Wakazuki et al., 2008), and it is anticipated that global convection‐permittingweather and climate predictionmodels…”
Convection‐permitting modeling with regional climate models: Latest developments and next steps (2021, background): “Several studies have already used CPRCMs in hydrological applications to assess future flood risks in the United States (Dougherty & Rasmussen, 2020, 2021; Lackmann, 2013), Eastern Alps (Reszler et al., 2018), Texas (Wang & Wang, 2019; Zhang, Wang, & Wang, 2020), Colorado River basin (Mendoza et al.”