Collaborative Research: Tropical Waves and Intertropical Convergence Zones in Simulations with Explicit Convection

这个合作项目将使用具有显式对流的模式来研究海洋上的热带辐合带(ITCZ)，它们与热带波的相互作用，以及两者对对流和中尺度过程的依赖性。主要的建模工具将是天气研究和预报(WRF)系统，该系统已得到扩充，可以作为高分辨率的嵌套热带通道运行，也可以作为低分辨率的模式运行，并将云解析模式用作对流的“超参数”。这一独特的模式框架允许使用标准对流参数化、超参数化或云层分辨率水平分辨率对模拟的ITCZ和对流耦合波进行并列比较。将进行一系列理想化的云分辨实验，以检验这一假设，即涡旋的水平混合往往会使ITCZ比没有它们时更宽、更弱。与对流有关的热带偏差是全球大气模式误差和不确定性的主要来源，因此在这一领域的理解进步应该会导致广泛的天气和气候应用的改善。该项目将支持大气科学研究生的教育和培训。WRF模型的超参数版本最终将提供给更广泛的大气科学界的研究人员。因此，更广泛的影响是巨大的。

This collaborative project will employ models with explicit convection to study Intertropical Convergence Zones (ITCZ) over the oceans, their interactions with tropical waves, and the dependence of both on convective and mesoscale processes. The primary modeling tool will be the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) system, which has been augmented to run either as a high-resolution nested tropical channel or as a lower-resolution model with a cloud-resolving model used as a "superparameterization" for convection. This unique model framework allows side-by-side comparisons of simulated ITCZs and convectively coupled waves using standard convection parameterizations, superparameterization, or cloud-resolving horizontal resolution. A suite of idealized cloud-resolving experiments will be performed to test the hypothesis that horizontal mixing by eddies tends to make the ITCZ broader and weaker than it would be in their absence.Convection-related tropical biases are a major source of error and uncertainty in global atmosphere models, so advances in understanding in this area should lead to improvements in a wide array of weather and climate applications. The project will support the education and training of an atmospheric sciences graduate student. The superparameterized version of the WRF model will eventually be made available to researchers in the broader atmospheric science community. Thus the broader impacts are substantial.