Cui Xiaopeng

Analyses of Dry Intrusion and Instability during a Heavy Rainfall Event that Occurred in Northern China

Abstract The 1°×1° National Center for Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) data and mesoscale numerical simulation data are analyzed to reveal a mechanism for the formation of heavy rainfall in Northern China; this mechanism is the non-uniformly saturated instability induced by a dry intrusion. The dry intrusion and the accompanying downward transport of air with a high value of potential vorticity (PV) are maintained during the precipitation event. As the dry air intrudes down into the warm and moist sector in the lower troposphere, the cold, dry air and the warm, moist air mix with each other, and, as a result, the atmosphere becomes non-uniformly saturated. On the basis of this non-uniform saturation, a new Brunt-Väisälä frequency (BVF) formula is derived and applied to the precipitation event. It is shown that, compared to the conditions of either a dry or a saturated atmosphere, the BVF in a non-uniformly saturated, moist atmosphere (BVF*) may be more appropriate for depicting the atmospheric instability in rainy regions.

Contribution of cloud condensate to surface rainfall process

Contribution of cloud condensate to surface rainfall processes is investigated in a life span of tropical convection based on hourly data from a two-dimensional cloud resolving simulation. The model is forced by the large-scale vertical velocity, zonal wind and horizontal advections obtained from tropical ocean global atmosphere coupled ocean-atmosphere response experiment (TOGA COARE). The results show that during the genesis, development, and decay of tropical convection, calculations with water vapor overestimate surface rain rate, and cloud condensate plays an important role in correcting overestimation in surface rain rates. The analysis is carried out in deep convective clouds and anvil clouds during the development of tropical convection. The surface rain rates calculated with water vapor in deep convective clouds and anvil clouds have similar magnitudes, the large surface rain rate appears in deep convective clouds due to the consumption of water hydrometeors whereas the small surface rain rate occurs in anvil clouds because of the gain of ice hydrometeors. Further analysis of the grid data shows that the surface rain rates calculated with water vapor and with cloud condensate are negatively correlated with the correlation coefficient of - 0.85, and the surface rain rate calculated with cloud condensate is mainly contributed to the water hydrometeors in the tropical deep convective regime.

Impacts of Cloud-Induced Mass Forcing on the Development of Moist Potential Vorticity Anomaly During Torrential Rains

The impacts of cloud-induced mass forcing on the development of the moist potential vorticity (MPV) anomaly associated with torrential rains are investigated by using NCEP/NCAR 1° × 1° data. The MPV tendency equation with the cloud-induced mass forcing is derived, and applied to the torrential rain event over the Changjiang River-Huaihe River Valleys during 26–30 June 1999. The result shows that positive anomalies are located mainly between 850 hPa and 500 hPa, while the maximum MPV, maximum positive tendency of the MPV, and maximum surface rainfall are nearly collocated. The cloud-induced mass forcing contributes to the positive tendency of the moist potential vorticity anomaly. The results indicate that the MPV may be used to track the propagation of rain systems for operational applications.

Moist Potential Vorticity and Up-Sliding Slantwise Vorticity Development

By using the moist potential vorticity equation derived from complete atmospheric equations including the effect of mass forcing, the theory of up-sliding slantwise vorticity development (USVD) is proposed based on the theory of slantwise vorticity development. When an air parcel slides up along a slantwise isentropic surface, its vertical component of relative vorticity is developed. Based on the theory of USVD, a complete vertical vorticity equation is expected with mass forcing, which explicitly includes the effect of both internal forcings and external forcings.

Up-Sliding Slantwise Vorticity Development and the Complete Vorticity Equation with Mass Forcing

The moist potential vorticity (MPV) equation is derived from complete atmospheric equations including the effect of mass forcing, with which the theory of Up-sliding Slantwise Vorticity Development (USVD) is proposed based on the theory of Slantwise Vorticity Development (SVD). When an air parcel slides up along a slantwise isentropic surface, its vertical component of relative vorticity will develop, and the steeper the isentropic surface is, the more violent the development will be. From the definition of MPV and the MPV equation produced here in, a complete vorticity equation is then put forward with mass forcing, which explicitly includes the effects of both internal forcings, such as variations of stability, baroclinicity, and vertical shear of horizontal wind, and external forcings, such as diabatic heating, friction, and mass forcing. When isentropic surfaces are flat, the complete vorticity equation matches its traditional counterpart. The physical interpretations of some of the items which are included in the complete vorticity equation but not in the traditional one are studied with a simplified model of the Changjiang-Huaihe Meiyu front. A 60-h simulation is then performed to reproduce a torrential rain event in the Changjiang-Huaihe region and the output of the model is studied qualitatively based on the theory of USVD. The result shows that the conditions of the theory of USVD are easily satisfied immediately in front of mesoscale rainstorms in the downwind direction, that is, the theory of USVD is important to the development and movement of these kinds of systems.

A phase analysis of vorticity vectors associated with tropical convection

Three new vorticity vectors have been proposed by Gao et al to study the two-dimensional tropical convection. In the present paper, phase relations between surface rain rate and the vorticity vectors are analysed with the calculations of lag correlation coefficients based on hourly zonally-averaged mass-integrated cloud-resolving simulation data. The cloud-resolving model is integrated with the vertical velocity, zonal wind, horizontal thermal and moisture advections, and sea surface temperature observed and derived from tropical ocean global atmosphere – coupled ocean atmosphere response experiment (TOGA-COARE) for 10 days. Maximum local increase of the vertical component of the convective vorticity vector leads maximum surface rain rate by 2 hours mainly due to the interaction between vorticity and zonal gradient of ice heating. While maximum local increase of the vertical component of the moist vorticity vector leads maximum surface rain rate by 2 hours mainly because of the interaction between zonal specific humidity gradient and zonal buoyancy gradient. And the maximum local decrease of the zonal component of the dynamic vorticity vector leads maximum surface rain rate by 2 hours mainly due to the interactions between vorticity and vertical pressure gradient as well as vorticity and buoyancy.

Diagnostic analysis of mesoscale rainstorms in the Jiang-Huai valley of China with convective vorticity vector

By the vector product of absolute vorticity vectors and equivalent potential temperature gradients, a new vector, convective vorticity vector (CVV) is readdressed after Gao et al., and is applied to the study of the development and movement of mesoscale rainstorms in the Jiang-Huai valley of China by using high-resolution simulation data with PSU/NCAR MM5 briefly. The results show that the CVV, especially its vertical component which is closely related to interactions between vertical secondary circulations and horizontal equivalent potential temperature gradients, may be a good tracer and diagnostic tool in the study of mesoscale rainstorms in the Jiang-Huai valley of China. And the main physical processes responsible for the variations of the vertical component of the CVV are discussed briefly based on its tendency equation proposed in this article.

Corrections to the collision term in the BGK Boltzmann equation

With the discrete method of the hexagonal cell and three different velocities of particle population in each cell, a two-dimensional lattice Boltzmann model is developed in this paper. The collision operator in the Boltzmann equation is expanded to fourth order using the Taylor expansion. With this model, good results have been obtained from the numerical simulation of the reflection phenomenon of the shock wave on the surface of an obstacle and the numerical stability is also good. Thus the applicability of the D2Q19 model is verified.

Kinetic Energy Budget Equations of Rotational and Divergent Flow in Terrain-following Coordinates

Abstract In this study, kinetic energy budget equations of rotational and divergent flow in pressure coordinates are derived on terrain-following coordinates. The new formulation explicitly shows the terrain effects and can be applied directly to model-simulated dynamic and thermodynamic fields on the models original vertical grid. Such application eliminates interpolation error and avoids errors in virtual weather systems in mountainous areas. These advantages and their significance are demonstrated by a numerical study in terrain-following coordinates of a developing vortex after it moves over the Tibetan Plateau in China.

Thermal aspect of the diurnal variation of tropical convective and stratiform rainfall

The diurnal variation of radiation plays a key role in determining the diurnal variations of tropical oceanic convective and stratiform rainfall, and the examination of such a relationship requires a direct link between the radiation term in a heat budget and the surface rain rate in a cloud budget. Thus, the thermally related surface rainfall budgets derived from the combination of cloud and heat budgets are analysed with two-dimensional equilibrium cloud-resolving model simulation data to study the effects of sea surface temperature (SST) and cloud radiative, and microphysical processes on the diurnal variations of convective and stratiform rainfall. The results show that the increase in SST, the inclusion of diurnal variation of SST and the exclusion of cloud radiative processes increase negative diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over rainfall-free regions during the nighttime through changing the vertical structures of diurnal anomaly of radiation in the troposphere. The strengthened negative diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over rainfallfree regions enhance positive diurnal anomalies of heat divergence over convective regions, which intensifies the positive diurnal anomaly of convective rainfall. The exclusion of microphysical effects of ice clouds increases the negative diurnal anomaly of heat divergence over rainfall-free regions during the nighttime through reducing latent heat; this appears to enhance the positive diurnal anomaly of heat divergence over raining stratiform regions, and thus stratiform rainfall.