Journal article
Does Lower‐Stratospheric Shear Influence the Mesoscale Organization of Convection?
Todd P Lane
Geophysical Research Letters | American Geophysical Union (AGU) | Published : 2021
DOI: 10.1029/2020gl091025
Abstract
Organized mesoscale convection is important for many atmospheric phenomena and hazards, however the understanding of its governing mechanisms is incomplete. Theories explaining mesoscale organization rely on the interaction between convection outflows and lower‐tropospheric wind shear. Here a new mechanism is presented, where lower‐stratospheric wind shear is shown to influence mesoscale organization. The mechanism is linked to coupling between convection and gravity waves, with the stratosphere playing a role in shaping the tropospheric wave spectrum. The key result is that lower‐stratospheric shear creates a preference for organized systems propagating in the same direction as the shear ve..
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Grants
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council's Centers of Excellence program (CE170100023). Computational resources were provided by the National Computational Infrastructure Facility (NCI). Thank you to George Bryan for making the CM1 model available and providing ongoing support for its use, and Stefan Tulich for providing the autocorrelation code used to create Figure S2. Thank you also to Shigeo Yoden, Claudia Stephan and two anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped improve the manuscript, and to Alvin Stone and Karla Fallon for help with the plain language summary. This work benefited from many discussions with my friend and collaborator Professor Fuqing Zhang (dec.), with this work being spawned from our previous collaboration on this topic.