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Overshooting convection in tropical cyclones
Author(s) -
Romps David M.,
Kuang Zhiming
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2009gl037396
Subject(s) - tropical cyclone , tropopause , convection , deep convection , climatology , tropics , tropical cyclogenesis , african easterly jet , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , stratosphere , atmospheric convection , geology , tropical wave , meteorology , cyclone (programming language) , troposphere , geography , field programmable gate array , fishery , computer science , computer hardware , biology
Using infrared satellite imagery, best‐track data, and reanalysis data, tropical cyclones are shown to contain a disproportionate amount of the deepest convection in the tropics. Although tropical cyclones account for only 7% of the deep convection in the tropics, they account for about 15% of the deep convection with cloud‐top temperatures below the monthly averaged tropopause temperature and 29% of the clouds that attain a cloud‐top temperature 15 K below the temperature of the tropopause. This suggests that tropical cyclones could play an important role in setting the humidity of the stratosphere.