Life Cycle of Mesoscale Convective Systems

S. M. Abdullaev, A. A. Zhelnin, and O. Yu. Lenskaya

Radar observations of the evolution and hierarchy of Cb clouds in different regions of the Earth are generalized to present the concept of a life cycle of a mesoscale convective system; during the life cycle, the separate Cb clouds develop into hierarchic coordinated mesoscale clusters, which recurrently originate and are localized in fixed places in the system which moves as a unit. The rising dominant clusters generate quasi-periodic oscillations of maximum intensity and wavelike space structure of the precipitation field. The methodological principles of the concept are used for objective classification of precipitation systems based on morphological and evolutional features. They can be used in techniques of very-short-range forecasting of hazardous convective weather.