Brian E. Mapes
Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences
Observations indicate that deep convective mass flux (and thereby heating) profiles adjust to oppose temperature perturbations in the environment. As a result, convection adjusts the stratification toward some version of a preferred moist adiabat. A buoyancy- sorting model of precipitating convection, coupled with a linearized hydrostatic dry dynamics module, illustrates the nature of these interactions. The preferred stratification established by the model convection depends on the treatment of precipitation and ice processes, and especially on the poorly-understood processes that determine mass flux in downdrafts associated with precipitation evaporation. These results suggest that observa tions of mean stratification in convecting regions may contain useful, highly averaged information on hard-to-observe bulk parameters characterizing the ensemble of real convective clouds. Buoyancy perturbations of <1C are quite important.
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