Coupling between gravity waves and tropical convection at mesoscales

Abstract

An idealized cloud-system-resolving model simulation is used to examine the coupling between a tropical cloud population and the mesoscale gravity waves that it generates. Spectral analyses of the cloud and gravity wave fields identify a clear signal of coupling between the clouds and a deep tropospheric gravity wave mode with a vertical wavelength that matches the depth of the convection, which is about two-thirds of the tropospheric depth. This vertical wavelength and the period of the waves, defined by a characteristic convective time scale, means that the horizontal wavelength is constrained through the dispersion relation. Indeed, the wave- convection couplingmanifests at the appropriat..