The impact of a land-sea contrast on convective aggregation in
radiative-convective equilibrium
Abstract
Convective aggregation is an important atmospheric phenomenon which
frequently occurs in idealised models in radiative-convective
equilibrium (RCE), where the effects of land, rotation, sea surface
temperature gradients, and the diurnal cycle are often removed. This
aggregation is triggered and maintained by self-generated radiatively
driven circulations, for which longwave feedbacks are essential. Many
questions remain over how important the driving processes of aggregation
in idealized models are in the real atmosphere. We approach this
question by adding a continentally-sized, idealized tropical rainforest
island into an RCE model to investigate how land-sea contrasts impact
convective aggregation and its mechanisms. We show that convection
preferentially forms over the island persistently in our simulation.
This is forced by a large-scale thermally driven circulation. First, a
sea-breeze circulation is triggered by the land-sea thermal contrast,
driven by surface sensible heating. This sea-breeze circulation triggers
convection which then generates longwave heating anomalies. We find that
these longwave heating anomalies are essential for maintaining the
aggregation of convection over the island through mechanism denial
tests. We also show, by varying the island size, that the aggregated
convective cluster appears to have a maximum spatial extent of 10,000
km. These results highlight that the mechanisms of idealized aggregation
remain relevant when land is included in the model, and therefore these
mechanisms could help us understand convective organization in the
real-world.