Do tropical cyclones intensify by WISHE?

By M. Montgomery, N. V. Sang, Roger K. Smith, J. Persing. 2009

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper we seek and obtain a basic understanding of tropical cyclone intensification in three dimensions when precipitation and evaporative‐cooling (warm rain) processes are included. Intensification with warm rain physics included is found to be dominated by highly localized deep convective structures possessing strong cyclonic vorticity in their cores—dubbed ‘Vortical Hot Towers’ (VHTs). Unlike previous studies, the findings herein suggest an intensification pathway that is distinct from the ‘evaporation–wind’ feedback mechanism known as wind‐induced surface heat exchange (WISHE), which requires a positive feedback between the azimuthal‐mean boundary‐layer equivalent potential temperature and the azimuthal‐mean surface wind speed underneath the eyewall of the storm. Intensification from a finite‐amplitude initial vortex is shown to not require this evaporation–wind feedback process. Indeed, when the surface wind speed in the sea‐to‐air vapour fluxes is capped at a nominal (trade‐wind) value, the vortex still intensifies by the same pathway identified in the main experiments via the generation of locally buoyant VHTs and the near‐surface convergence that the VHTs induce within the boundary layer.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a25d81664a1c6f50883faa610869550981bebff8

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Citations in the corpus

A new paradigm for intensity modification of tropical cyclones: Thermodynamic impact of vertical wind shear on the inflow layer (2009, background): “In fact, the VHTs carry the local buoyancy that is essential for intensification; while in the azimuthal mean the TC vortex is negatively buoyant relative to its environment (Montgomery et al., 2009).”
Tropical cyclogenesis in a tropical wave critical layer: easterly waves (2008, background): “It seems that modeling studies are needed for this purpose (Montgomery et al., 2009).”
Dependence of tropical‐cyclone intensification on the boundary‐layer representation in a numerical model (2010, unknown): “¶Nguyen et al. used the bulk aerodynamic scheme. The calculations are performed on an f -plane centred at 20◦N. Deep moist convection is resolved explicitly and represented by the warm-rain scheme as used in section 5 of M1. In addition we use one of five boundary-layer schemes as detailed in subsec”
Recent Developments in the Fluid Dynamics of Tropical Cyclones (2017, unknown): “Therefore, the mechanism is unnecessary to explain intensiﬁcation in the prototype problem, but the simulated vortices do become stronger when the wind-speed dependence of the heat ﬂuxes is retained (Montgomery et al. 2009, 2015).”