The Global Population of Mesoscale Convective Complexes (MCCs) over Indonesian Maritime Continent during 15 Years

Abstract

Mesoscale convective complexes (MCCs) were identified and tracked during 15-years over Indonesian Maritime Continent (IMC) by infrared satellite imagery using an algorithm that combines criteria of cloud coverage, eccentricity, and cloud lifetime. Infrared satellite imagery is obtained from the Himawari generation satellite data. This study results that there are several characteristics of MCC over the IMC, among others; Most of these MCCs were over the continental area, mainly near the mountains and the high elevation areas which have similar characteristic with the global population of MCCs in the world. The peak of MCC occurrence over the IMC is during MAM with around 33.56% due to likely linked to the synoptic-scale environment, which is more baroclinic in nature than in the late summer months. Around of 26,26% and 25,29%, MCC occurrences are found in DJF and SON, respectively. The season with fewer events is JJA, around of 14.79%. The average of cloud shield area size of MCCs is around 315,000 km2. The average duration of the MCCs over IMC was approximately ∼9.5 hours and the maximum duration was 10 hours. Those observed in this study were usually nocturnal and reached a maximum at midnight.