Cell Merger Potential in Multicell Thunderstorms of Weakly Sheared Environments: Cell Separation Distance versus Planetary Boundary Layer Depth

Abstract

Abstract Using high-resolution three-dimensional numerical experiments, this paper shows that the cell separation distance scales as 0.75 times the planetary boundary layer (PBL) depth for successful cell mergers between constructively interacting cells within multicell thunderstorms. This boundary layer scaling is determined from several simulations of convective cell pairs with a fixed PBL depth and is shown to be valid for other sensitivity simulations with larger PBL depths. This research establishes a robust and quantitative relation between prestorm ambient conditions and cell merger potential useful for research efforts on the multifaceted cell merger process of multicell thunderstorms. The weakly sheared ambient prestorm conditions of the 9 August 1991 Convection and Precipitation/Electrification Experiment (CaPE) multicell thunderstorm are used to initialize the cell pair simulations. Since ambient wind and wind shear are assumed to be zero, only simple cell mergers, defined in this study as those between cell updraft cores joined but not overlapping in the convective stage, are shown to be possible. The coarse-resolution simulations of Stalker suggest that ambient wind shear may be necessary for forced cell mergers, defined in this study as those in which the initial updraft cores are found apart. The scenarios of overlapping initial updraft cores for cell merger are considered physically invalid in this study.