Environmental impacts on the flux of mass through deep convection

Abstract

AbstractThough deep convective clouds are important to numerous aspects of the climate system, they remain a source of much uncertainty. The varying large‐scale dynamics, relatively short development time, range of spatial scales, and complex microphysics involved in deep convection lead to difficulty in both observation of these clouds and modelling their impacts on larger spatial and longer temporal scales. This study utilizes an ensemble of high‐resolution cloud‐resolving simulations of deep convection forming in a spectrum of different environments to explore the sensitivity of deep convection, and in particular convective mass flux to changes in the initial conditions. We find that convection strength is strongly sensitive to small perturbations in the environment, specifically the convective available potential energy (CAPE) and boundary‐layer humidity. That storm effects on the environment, such as mass transport and tropospheric moistening through detrainment, are sensitive to these initial conditions points to the importance of better representing such parameters in global models.