Thermodynamic and circulation characteristics of winter monsoon tropical mesoscale convection ( South China Sea).

Abstract

During the December 1978 field phase of the International Winter Monsoon Experiment (Winter MONEX), a regular diurnal cycle of deep convective activity occurred over the South China Sea immediately to the north of Borneo. The convection was initiated during the late night hours by convergence of the low-level northeast monsoon flow with the land breeze along Borneo's north coast. The precipitation feature that developed was characterized during its mature stage by a nearly continuous stratiform cloud, referred to here as a mesoscale anvil, of ca100-500 km dimension extending from the mid-troposphere (ca5 km) to near the tropopause (ca17 km) -from Authors