9318914 Wicker Over the past several years much progress has been made in determining the environmental meteorological parameters that determine the structure of thunderstorms. In particular, an important discovery is the factors that are highly correlated with the storms (know as supercell storms) that typically produce tornadoes. Even though most major tornadoes are spawned within supercell thunderstorms, not all supercells produce tornadoes and the tornadoes themselves span a broad spectrum of severity. In this research the Principal Investigator will investigate the large scale environmental conditions that control the intensity and longevity of tornadoes. Advances in computational power and numerical techniques permit a numerical modeling parameter study of supercell/tornado systems. The goal is to simulate the observed spectrum of tornadic storms by systematically varying the environmental wind shear and buoyancy. Successful completion of this research will increase understanding of tornadoes and potentially provide operational meteorologists with better information for predicting severe tornadic events. ***
