Research

This page features a collection of my past and current research. Please email me if you’d like to request access to a specific publication.

Projected changes of Mesoscale Convective Systems and their environments

Mesoscale convective systems (MCS) are clusters of individual deep convective cells that propagate and organize into one distinct storm. MCS make-up a substantial share of total accumulated rain for portions of the tropics and mid-latitudes. These storms can also be associated with severe weather such as strong winds, flash flooding, and hail.

Figure 1 (above): Average annual accumulated rainfall, annual accumulated rainfall from MCS, and the ratio of MCS rainfall to all rainfall in 15-year convection permitting regional climate simulations forced by CESM for the historical (1990-2005) period [top], end of century [2085-2100] RCP4.5 scenario (middle), and end of century RCP8.5 scenario (bottom).

The hazardous conditions that can be associated with MCS coupled with their importance towards regional hydrology make them a prime candidate for further study using numerical weather models. Unfortunately, most models used in climate studies employ grid spacings that are often too coarse to accurately resolve MCS and the features that contribute to their development and maintenance. Within the last decade, the use of high resolution models with grid spacings of a few kilometers or less (referred to as convection-permitting models) have become more widespread. These modeling studies have allowed researchers to gain a better understanding of MCS overall and offers further insight into how they may react in response to climate change.

My research leverages a set of high-resolution convection-permitting regional climate simulations performed by Gensini et al. (2022) to analyze how MCS frequency and intensity may change in a future climate. MCS are detected following a methodology established by Haberlie and Ashley (2018) and are grouped by the region in which they spend a majority of their lifetime within. Preliminary work has found that MCS frequency and intensity are expected to increase in response the warmer and moister future climate state (Figure 1).

Current work is underway to isolate the contributions of changes in the large-scale dynamic and thermodynamic environment towards this response.