Evaluation of a Stochastic Mixing Scheme in the Deep Convective Gray
Zone Using a Tropical Oceanic Deep Convection Case Study
Abstract
A stochastic horizontal subgrid-scale mixing scheme is evaluated in
ensemble simulations of a tropical oceanic deep convection case using a
horizontal grid spacing (Δh) of 3 km. The stochastic scheme, which
perturbs the horizontal mixing coefficient according to a prescribed
spatiotemporal autocorrelation scale, is found to generally increase
mesoscale organization and convective intensity relative to a
non-stochastic control simulation. Perturbations applied at relatively
short autocorrelation scales induce differences relative to the control
that are more systematic than those from perturbations applied at
relatively long scales that yield more variable outcomes. A simulation
with mixing enhanced by a constant factor of 4 significantly increases
mesoscale organization and convective intensity, while turning off
horizontal subgrid-scale mixing decreases both. Total rainfall is
modulated by a combination of mesoscale organization, areal coverage of
convection, and convective intensity. The stochastic simulations tend to
behave more similarly to the constant enhanced mixing simulation owing
to greater impacts from enhanced mixing as compared to reduced mixing.
The impacts of stochastic mixing are robust, ascertained by comparing
the stochastic mixing ensembles with a non-stochastic mixing ensemble
that has grid-scale noise added to the initial thermodynamic field.
Compared to radar observations and a higher resolution Δh = 1 km
simulation, stochastic mixing seemingly degrades the simulation
performance. These results imply that stochastic mixing produces
non-negligible impacts on convective system properties and evolution but
does not lead to an improved representation of convective cloud
characteristics in the case studied here.