Article
Latitudinal dependence of the dry air effect on tropical cyclone development
DYNAMICS OF ATMOSPHERES AND OCEANS
Shi Donglei，Ge Xuyang，Peng Melinda
Abstract
The impacts of dry air on tropical cyclone (TC) development at different latitudes with no mean flows are investigated with idealized simulations. It is found that the effective radius of the dry air is sensitive to its vertical distribution and the background earth rotation. The effect of low-level dry-air layer in inhibiting TC development decreases with increasing latitude. At lower latitudes, the greater boundary layer gradient wind imbalance results in a strong low-level inflow, and the dry air can easily penetrate into the TC inner-core region. The intruding dry air inhibits the inner-core deep convection and leads to marked asymmetric convective structure, which significantly suppresses TC development. In contrast, at higher latitudes, the dry air gets moistened before reaching the TC inner-core region due to a weaker radial inflow but can suppress the development of the outer spiral rainbands. The suppressed outer spiral rainbands lead to a weaker barrier effect to the boundary layer inflow and help TC development. Furthermore, the lower the altitude of dry-air layer resides, the greater the impact on TC intensification. The low-level pathway associated with the boundary layer inflow plays an important role on how dry air layer acts on a TC without considering the mean flow effects. Through examining the climatological distribution of the moisture field, we expect that the intrusion of dry air can be more frequent in the North Atlantic area and therefore has more effects on TC development than in the western North Pacific.
DOI: 10.1016/j.dynatmoce.2019.101102
