The four specific objectives to be defined are: (1) the role of melting and subcloud layer evaporation in the creation of lower tropospheric inverted troughs, (2) the effects of surface fluxes, melting, and lower tropospheric evaporation on the structure, circulation, and amplification of a vortex-bearing mesoscale convective system, (3) the differences between the large scale environment of regions that experience numerous mesoscale convective complexes (MCCs) and the environment of other convectively-active regions where MCCs rarely occur, and (4) the global characteristics of MCCs and their contribution to the global hydrologic cycle. The PIs expect to provide understanding of how mesoscale cloud and precipitation processes interact with, contribute to, and change their large scale environment.//
