Impacts of Land-Atmosphere Interactions on Regional Convection and Rainfall

High resolution (1-10 km) numerical weather prediction (NWP) models face major challenges trying to improve representation of moist processes. In particular, simulating the interaction between the land surface and regional convection and rainfall is a source of uncertainties and presents three main barriers: (i) NWP models generally have simple land surface schemes, (ii) land-atmosphere coupling is not properly represented in models, and (iii) many assumptions made in deriving the theory of convective parameterizations are no longer valid at “gray scales” (e.g., 1-10 km). In this dissertation, interactions between land-surface heterogeneities, land-atmosphere coupling, and moist convection and related mesoscale circulations were investigated in four major studies to improve and advance the understanding of high-resolution model simulations of regional convection and precipitation. A number of short-term (i.e., 24-48 hours) retrospective numerical experiments were conducted over a variety of land-atmosphere coupling hotspot regions across the globe.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

Year

2015

Author dc:creator

• Zheng, Yue

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jon Harbor
• Dev Niyogi
• Nathanial Brunsell
• Qianlai Zhuang
• Kiran Alapaty

• Convection parameterization
• High-resolution
• Land-atmosphere coupling
• Land-atmosphere interaction
• Land-surface heterogeneity
• Mesoscale convection

Repository record dc:identifier

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/1491

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:docs.lib.purdue.edu:open_access_dissertations-2707