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

北美季风实验(NAME)于2004年夏天在墨西哥西北部和加利福尼亚州海湾进行，目的是改善对北美季风的理解和预测。不结盟运动是美国西南部夏季降水的主要来源。在2004年之前，人们对该地区的对流和中尺度降雨过程知之甚少。根据前一项奖励，首席调查员参加了实地取名阶段。他还从NAME和之前研究的雨量计数据中获得了初步结果，这些数据表明，降雨在地势较高的地区更频繁，但沿沿海平原的降雨率更大。在广泛的质量控制活动之后，首席调查员现在准备对姓名雷达数据集进行详细调查。这项研究的学术价值包括：了解马德雷山脉西部高地和邻近沿海平原之间的降水变化，包括这些地点之间的微物理过程和中尺度组织如何变化并促成这种降雨多变性；了解对流的中尺度组织如何与陆地-海风环流、加利福尼亚州海湾低层急流以及天气尺度上的强迫(例如与热带东风波有关的)相关联。这项研究的更广泛影响包括：改进数值模式的物理过程，目的是通过与基于极化雷达的分析进行比较来模拟不结盟运动；由于地形在触发该区域对流方面发挥着如此重要的作用，因此增加了对地形诱发降雨的一般理解；改进了基于极化雷达的降雨估计算法；验证和改进了在该区域存在已知偏差的基于卫星微波的降雨算法。

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.