Quantifying the Effect of Surface Heating and Aerosols on Sea-Breeze Forced Deep Convection

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In the tropics, deep convection is largely controlled by surface temperature variations. Islands in ocean regions exert significant control on the setting of the surface temperature variation. The initiation of deep convection is often controlled by sea breezes, which force large upward vertical air motions. Numerical weather forecast models have difficulty to incorporate air circulations caused by island sea breezes with various sizes and topographies and their role in enhancing aerosol emissions. The interaction between aerosols and convective vigor particularly over islands is poorly understood. Convection over islands could contain relatively high aerosol concentration compared to air flows over sea, which provides nuclei for water to condense on in forming clouds. The study is to determine the occurrence, mechanisms, and environmental conditions of sea breeze convection initiation, the effect of orography on sea breeze forced convection over islands, and the effect of aerosol-sea breeze interaction on convective vigor over islands. The project will involve undergraduate students to participate in the cutting-edge research by learning high performance computing and developing a rigorous approach to problem solving and scientific analysis. Furthermore, because cloud formation and precipitation forecast remain one of difficult problems in weather forecasting, the knowledge gained from this study may shed light on convective cloud processes. The research team will use a hierarchy of cloud resolving numerical models, forward modeling satellite simulators, and satellite/radar observations to investigate the following physical hypotheses: 1) sea-breeze-aerosol interactions control both initiation and intensity of deep convection; 2) heated island air that contains island aerosols triggers deep convection principally via sea-breeze or cold-pool dynamics. The numerical result will be used to simulate satellite observations by applying the Satellite Data Simulator Unit (SDSU); comparisons of actual satellite data with SDSU simulated outputs will provide a bridge between the observational and modeling components of the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.