Numerical diffusion and turbulent mixing in convective self-aggregation

Abstract

Spontaneous aggregation of deep convection is a common feature of idealized numerical simulations of the tropical atmosphere in Radiative-Convective Equilibrium (RCE). However, at coarse grid resolution where deep convection is not fully resolved, the occurrence of this phenomenon is highly sensitive to subgrid-scale processes. This study investigates the role of mixing and entrainment, provided by either the turbulence model or the implicit numerical dissipation, in this phenomenon. The results of two different models, WRF and SAM, have been analysed and compared using different configurations by varying the turbulence models, initial conditions, and horizontal spatial resolution. At a coarse grid resolution of 3 km, the occurrence of Convective Self-Aggregation (CSA) is prevented in models with low numerical diffusivity due to the removal of turbulent mixing, while it is preserved in models with high numerical diffusivity. When refining the horizontal grid resolution to 1 km, which reduces the implicit numerical dissipation, CSA can only be achieved by increasing explicit turbulent mixing. Even with a small amount of shallow clouds, CSA was found to occur in this case. Therefore, this study suggests that the sensitivity of CSA to horizontal grid resolution is not primarily due to the corresponding decrease in shallow clouds. It has been found that the amplitude of initial humidity perturbations introduced by convection in the free troposphere is regulated by turbulent mixing and dissipation at small scales. The size and strength of humidity perturbations in the free troposphere that can destabilize the RCE state increase with greater dissipation at small scales.