The question of how various scales of motion in the atmosphere interact with one another is one of the more fundamental unanswered questions in the meteorological sciences. The transfer of energy between scales is a major factor in organizing locally severe weather such as heavy snowfalls and thunderstorms and our lack of understanding of these processes is a major obstacle to fundamentally improving prediction of such phenomena. In this research, the Principal Investigator will study the internal and external scale interaction processes affecting the evolution of warm core convective disturbances. The studied phenomena will include collections of thunderstorms, known as mesoscale convective complexes, and tropical cyclones. His research objectives will be accomplished primarily through numerical modeling and should shed light on the important dynamical interactions that control these severe weather producing systems.
