Moist versus dry barotropic instability in a shallow-water model of the atmosphere with moist convection

Abstract

Dynamical influence of moist convection upon development of the barotropic instability is studied in the rotating shallow-water model. First, an exhaustive linear "dry" stability analysis of the Bickley jet is performed, and the most unstable mode identified in this way is used to initialize simulations to compare the development and the saturation of the instability in dry and moist configurations. High-resolution numerical simulations with a well-balanced finite-volume scheme reveal substantial qualitative and quantitative differences in the evolution of dry and moist-convective instabilities. The moist effects affect both balanced and unbalanced components of the flow. The most important differences between dry and moist evolution are 1) the enhanced efficiency of the moist-convective instability, which manifests itself by the increase of the growth rate at the onset of precipitation, and by a stronger deviation of the end state from the initial one, measured with a number of different norms; 2) a pronounced cyclone-anticyclone asymmetry during the nonlinear evolution of the moist-convective instability, which leads to an additional, with respect to the dry case, geostrophic adjustment, and the modification of the end state; and 3) an enhanced ageostrophic activity in the precipitation zones but also in the nonprecipitating areas because of the secondary geostrophic adjustment. © 2011 American Meteorological Society.