AN EXPLICIT 3-DIMENSIONAL NONHYDROSTATIC NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF A TROPICAL CYCLONE

A nonhydrostatic numerical simulation of a tropical cyclone is performed with explicit representation of cumulus on a meso-beta scale grid and for a brief period on a meso-gamma scale grid. Individual cumulus plumes are represented by a combination of explicit resolution and a 1.5 level closure predicting turbulent kinetic energy (TKE). The results demonstrate a number of expected and unexpected important scale interaction processes. Within the central core of the developing cyclone, meso-beta convective regions grow and breakdown into propagating inertia-gravity waves throughout the lifecycle of the cyclone. In the early stages, the amplitude of pressure fluctuations associated with the meso-beta scale convection exceed the central pressure of the cyclone and strongly modulate its intensity. With each meso-beta scale pulsation, the cyclone core increases in strength, measured by the central pressure deficit. The increasingly strong inertial frequency of the storm core acts to increasingly trap the convection induced heating within the core by balancing the tangential wind against the low central pressure, before the meso-beta scale convection breaks down and sends the warmth away as a propagating wave. Eventually, the slow manifold's amplitude exceeds the amplitude of the meso-beta scale oscillations and a stable eye region is formed. As inertial instability increases, increasingly high thermal warmth can be protected in the core, allowing persistent subsidence to form and to clear out the cyclone eye. On the outside of the eye wall, strong inertial stability gradients in the troposphere cause convective warming to split the inflow to the eye wall and spawn outwardly propagating inertia gravity waves. These waves carry away all of the heating forced by convection that is not inertially trapped by the eye wall and act as a moderating influence on storm intensity. Inertia gravity waves are also spawned in the stratosphere at the top of the eye wall by the revolution of asymmetric cumulus structures. In all instances, the tropospheric waves are coupled to the propagating stratospheric waves which both move at 35 ms-1, although there are many instances where the stratospheric waves seem to have no tropospheric counterpart. Hence the anvil top forcing and low level breakdown are linked. The outwardly propagating inertia gravity waves act to initiate outer bands of convection. This initiation is with the assistance of low level boundary layer variations of density related to previous convection and to virga falling from the anvil which moistens and destabilizes the mid levels of theta(e) minimum. The convection initiated by these waves does not move substantially outward with the wave, although may appear to develop outward discontinuously.