Collaborative Research: Convective Processes in the Tropics Across Scales

在热带地区，降雨事件的大小不等，从小规模（如单个雷暴）到大规模（如季风）。同时观察或模拟小尺度的细节和大尺度的图案是很困难的。因此，云、风暴和降雨的许多方面都没有得到充分的了解。同样重要的是要注意到，热带降雨事件不仅对热带地区有影响，而且还可以激发从热带向北移动并影响美国大陆的天气模式。这里的研究项目将提高我们对小尺度细节和大尺度模式相互作用的理解。项目活动将在促进教学、培训和学习的同时，通过促进发现和理解，以多种方式造福社会。特别的好处包括：(i)通过培养本科生、研究生和博士后来培养有竞争力的STEM劳动力；（ii）拓展至K-12学校，让学生熟悉STEM研究，并激励他们从事STEM职业；（iii）透过辅导本科生进行研究项目，扩大弱势群体的参与；㈣开展针对影响人类的云和降雨过程的研究，改善社会中个人的福祉，因为更好地了解这些过程有助于改进建模和预测，造福社会。热带潮湿对流过程涉及范围广泛的尺度。因此，由于仪器的限制，在观测中出现困难，由于计算成本，在模拟中出现困难，许多对流现象没有得到充分理解。一些例子包括岛屿海岸线和地形对热带降雨日循环的影响，对流耦合的赤道波事件与热带岛屿的相互作用，以及夹带和混合过程。为了使这些过程的模拟在跨尺度模拟降水云时可行，将利用最近的初步研究结果来使用自适应网格细化和非基于列的网格。这些方法允许对难以或不可能用均匀间隔的笛卡尔网格模拟的过程进行调查。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In the tropics, rainfall events can range in size, from small in size (such as an individual thunderstorm) to very large in size (such as a monsoon). It is difficult to observe or simulate the small-sized details and the large-sized patterns at the same time. As a result, many aspects of clouds, storms, and rainfall are not fully understood. It is also important to note that tropical rainfall events have an influence not only within the tropics, but can also excite weather patterns that move northward out of the tropics and influence the continental United States. The research projects here will improve our understanding of the interaction of small-sized details and large-sized patterns.The project activities will benefit society in several ways through advancing discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training, and learning. Particular benefits include: (i) developing a competitive STEM workforce by training undergraduate students, a graduate student, and a postdoc; (ii) outreach to K-12 schools to familiarize students with STEM research and motivate them to pursue STEM careers; (iii) broadening the participation of underrepresented groups by mentoring undergraduate students in conducting research projects; and (iv) improving the well-being of individuals in society by conducting research that is aimed at cloud and rainfall processes that influence humanity, since a better understanding of these processes can help to improve modeling and predictions and benefit society.Moist convective processes in the tropics involve a vast range of scales. As a result, difficulties arise in observations due to instrument constraints and in simulations due to computational cost, and many convective phenomena are not fully understood. Some examples include the influence of island coastlines and topography on the diurnal cycle of tropical rainfall, the interaction of convectively coupled equatorial wave events and tropical islands, and entrainment and mixing processes. For simulations of these processes to be viable while modeling precipitating clouds across scales, recent results of the preliminary studies will be leveraged to use adaptive mesh refinement and non-column-based grids. These methods allow the investigation of processes that would be difficult or impossible to simulate with uniformly-spaced Cartesian grids.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.