Studies of Convection in the North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME)

北美季风实验（NAME）于2004年夏季在墨西哥西北部和加州湾进行，以提高对北美季风（NAM）的理解和预测。 NAM是美国西南部夏季降水的主要来源。在NAME 2004年之前，人们对该地区的对流和中尺度降水过程知之甚少。 根据前一个奖项，首席研究员参加了外地阶段的名称。 他还能够从NAME以及先前研究的雨量计数据中获得初步结果，这些数据表明，降雨在地势较高的地区更为频繁，但沿着沿海平原的福尔斯降雨率更高。首席研究员现在准备在广泛的质量控制活动之后对NAME雷达数据集进行详细的调查。这项研究的知识价值包括：了解马德雷山脉西方和邻近沿海平原的高地形之间的降水变化，包括微物理过程和中尺度组织如何在这些地点之间变化，并有助于这种降雨变化;了解对流的中尺度组织如何与陆风环流等突出特征相耦合，加州湾低空急流，以及天气尺度上的强迫，如与热带东风波有关。这项研究的更广泛的影响包括：通过与NAME的基于极化雷达的分析进行比较，改善数值模式中旨在模拟NAM的物理过程;增加对地形引起的降雨的一般理解，因为地形在触发该地区的对流中起着如此重要的作用;改进基于极化雷达的降雨估计算法;验证和改进基于卫星微波的降雨算法，该算法在该区域存在已知偏差。

The North American Monsoon Experiment (NAME) was carried out in summer 2004 in northwestern Mexico and the Gulf of California to improve understanding and prediction of the North American Monsoon, or NAM. The NAM is responsible for much of the summer rainfall in the southwestern U.S. Before NAME 2004, little was known about the convective and mesoscale rainfall processes in this region. Under a predecessor award, the Principal Investigator participated in the field phase of NAME. He also was able to obtain initial results from NAME as well as previously studied rain gauge data which indicates that rainfall is more frequent over the higher terrain, but falls at more intense rates along the coastal plain. The Principal Investigator is now poised to conduct detailed investigations of the NAME radar dataset following extensive quality control activities. The intellectual merit of this research includes: Understanding precipitation variability between the high terrain of the Sierra Madre Occidental and the adjacent coastal plain, including how microphysical processes and mesoscale organization may vary between these locations and contribute to this rainfall variability; Understanding how mesoscale organization of convection is coupled to prominent features such as the land-sea breeze circulations, the Gulf of California low-level jet, and forcing on the synoptic scale such as associated with tropical easterly waves. The broader impacts of this research include: Improving physical processes in numerical models aimed at simulating the NAM through comparison to polarimetric-radar based analyses from NAME; Adding to general understanding of orographically-induced rainfall since topography plays such an important role in triggering convection in this region; Improving polarimetric radar-based algorithms for rainfall estimation; Validating and improving satellite microwave-based rainfall algorithms, which have known biases in this region.