Cold Pools Reduce the Impacts of Deforestation on Convection Initiation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Falk, Nicholas M., Leung, Gabrielle R., Grant, Leah D., Heever, Susan C. van den
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Falk, Nicholas M.
Leung, Gabrielle R.
Grant, Leah D.
Heever, Susan C. van den
author_facet Falk, Nicholas M.
Leung, Gabrielle R.
Grant, Leah D.
Heever, Susan C. van den
contents The individual and synergistic impacts of cold pools and land surface heterogeneity on convection initiation are investigated. Idealized large eddy simulations of deep convection over the Amazon rainforest are conducted. Simulations test realistic and homogenized vegetation, along with realistic and suppressed low-level evaporation which eliminates cold pools. Updrafts are tracked to determine convection initiation locations. The aggregation of initiation locations is quantified with an organization index. Initiation locations are randomly distributed over homogeneous vegetation, with or without cold pools, demonstrating that cold pools have minimal impacts on initiation locations over homogeneous vegetation. With realistic vegetation, convection initiation is more frequent over forested than deforested areas due to favorable thermodynamics. Heterogeneous vegetation effectively aggregates initiation locations and precipitation compared to homogeneous vegetation, whereas cold pools disaggregate initiation locations and precipitation by propagating into deforested regions and initiating convection. Thus, cold pools partially counteract the effects of anthropogenically driven land surface heterogeneity.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_17469
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cold Pools Reduce the Impacts of Deforestation on Convection Initiation
Falk, Nicholas M.
Leung, Gabrielle R.
Grant, Leah D.
Heever, Susan C. van den
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
The individual and synergistic impacts of cold pools and land surface heterogeneity on convection initiation are investigated. Idealized large eddy simulations of deep convection over the Amazon rainforest are conducted. Simulations test realistic and homogenized vegetation, along with realistic and suppressed low-level evaporation which eliminates cold pools. Updrafts are tracked to determine convection initiation locations. The aggregation of initiation locations is quantified with an organization index. Initiation locations are randomly distributed over homogeneous vegetation, with or without cold pools, demonstrating that cold pools have minimal impacts on initiation locations over homogeneous vegetation. With realistic vegetation, convection initiation is more frequent over forested than deforested areas due to favorable thermodynamics. Heterogeneous vegetation effectively aggregates initiation locations and precipitation compared to homogeneous vegetation, whereas cold pools disaggregate initiation locations and precipitation by propagating into deforested regions and initiating convection. Thus, cold pools partially counteract the effects of anthropogenically driven land surface heterogeneity.
title Cold Pools Reduce the Impacts of Deforestation on Convection Initiation
topic Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17469