Why Do Thunderstorms Cluster Over Tropical Oceans?
Divya Sri Praturi · portrait · 1:57
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"title": "Why Do Thunderstorms Cluster Over Tropical Oceans?",
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"description": "Satellite loops show tropical storms gathering into vast clumps that live for days. Divya Sri Praturi asks why convection organises itself with no mountains or coastlines to guide it. In this publication she explains convective self-aggregation, the feedbacks of moisture and radiation behind it, and why clustered storms dry the tropics, change extreme rainfall, and alter how the planet sheds heat.",
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"text": "My name is Divya Sri Praturi and I'm a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology."
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"text": "I'm originally from India and I did my bachelor's, master's and PhD in aerospace engineering."
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"text": "My PhD focused on understanding the different processes that control the stability of plasma jets but I got really interested in understanding the dynamics and the physics of the Earth system and that's why I made the transition to meteorology."
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"text": "At the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology I work mainly on the intertropical convergence zone or the ITCZ."
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"text": "The ITCZ is this region in the tropics where the northerly and the southerly trade winds converge and what I'm mainly interested in is understanding how the vorticity in the ITCZ evolves and how does it depend on the latitude of the ITCZ."
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"text": "So I also try to understand how the vorticity of the northerly and the southerly air parcels that come into the ITCZ evolve and understand how the processes in the ITCZ affect the vorticity of the air parcels coming in."
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"text": "One of the main findings of this analysis that we obtained by looking at the nextGEMS runs which are kilometer scale coupled atmosphere ocean land simulations is that the vorticity in the ITCZ depends on the latitude at which it's located."
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"text": "So the vorticity increases as the ITCZ moves to the north, and this is because the process that controls the vorticity and amplifies the vorticity in the ITCZ depends on the Coriolis parameter."
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"text": "I'm quite excited to see how and what this means in the scenario simulations that are a part of the nextGEMS project."
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"summary": "In idealised simulations, randomly scattered storms drift into a single moist cluster surrounded by desert-dry air: self-aggregation. Radiative cooling of dry regions and moisture memory drive the clumping. The degree of clustering controls extreme rain and how easily the tropics radiate heat to space, making organisation a first-order climate question."
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