Properties of Mesoscale Convective Systems Throughout Their Lifetimes Using IMERG, GPM, WWLLN, and a Simplified Tracking Algorithm

Abstract

AbstractMesoscale convective systems (MCSs) occur frequently over the tropics and mid‐latitudes and have a large impact on the local precipitation amounts as well as large‐scale circulation through their modulation of the vertical diabatic heating profile. To fully understand and quantify these effects, MCSs must be studied throughout their lifetimes at both mid‐ and tropical latitudes, over both land and ocean. This can be accomplished by tracking the storm using a global scale data set of precipitation and using this information to composite collocated active sensor measurements to produce a detailed analysis of storm properties along the lifetime of the MCS. To do this, we utilize precipitation features (PFs) produced using observations from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission's core satellite and from Integrated Multi‐satellitE Retrievals for GPM data by grouping contiguous raining pixels in both data sets. We propose a simplified tracking algorithm to track systems throughout their lifetimes. Lightning data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network are collocated to these tracks along with GPM PFs. These are then composited relative to the time step along the track that has the greatest number of lightning flashes, which is used as a proxy for MCSs with lightning reaching the maximum convective intensity. We then examine various radar variables for tropical and mid‐latitude systems of varying lifetimes over both land and ocean in order to determine the differences and similarities between these types of systems.