Studies of Mesoscale Convective Systems

中尺度对流系统（MCS）是深层对流风暴的集合，是美国春季和夏季最有利的降雨和破坏性恶劣天气的母体。提高对这些系统及其与其他运动尺度的相互作用的理解是改善美国天气研究计划所追求的天气预测的基础。利用俄克拉何马州-堪萨斯州风暴中心初步区域实验（O-K PRE-STORM；其中STORM代表风暴规模操作和研究气象学）期间收集的数据，首席研究员将调查mcs的结构和演变以及它们如何影响更大规模的气流。两个主要目标是：(1)确定MCSs层状区环流结构如何发展，以及它如何影响母对流系统的结构和寿命；(2)研究对流垂直气流的结构，以确定区域平均对流结构在空间和时间上是如何变化的，这可能是环境热力结构中尺度梯度的结果，以及对流区域与内部中尺度风暴相对流之间的相互作用。

Mesoscale convective systems (MCS) are collections of deep convective storms that are the parents of most beneficial rain and destructive severe weather in the Spring and Summer in the US. Improved understanding of these systems and their interactions with other scales of motion is fundamental to improve weather predictions sought after in the US Weather Research Program. Using data previously collected during the Oklahoma-Kansas Preliminary Regional Experiment for STORM Central (O-K PRE-STORM; where STORM stands for STormscale Operational and Research Meteorology), the Principal Investigator will investigate the structure and evolution of MCSs and how they affect the larger scale flow. The two major objectives are: (1) determine how the circulation structure of the stratiform regions of MCSs develops and how that may affect the structure and longevity of the parent convective system; (2) examine the structure of convective vertical drafts to determine how the area-averaged convective structure varies in space and time as a possible consequence of mesoscale gradients in the thermodynamic structure of the environment, and interaction between the convective region and internal mesoscale storm-relative flow.