The Characteristic Feature of Thermal Convection in the Atmosphere (II)

Case of Moist Convection

Abstract

Considering the moist convection from the standpoint of view of scale analysis of disturbance, we obtain the relation of conservation of kinetic and potential energy in a special case of shallow convection. From this energy conservation, the maximum vertical velocity of convective motion is estimated approximately as the function of the parameters such as the ratio of the cloud area to the associated cloudless area and the static stability of the large-scale enviromental atmosphere. In order to examine the qualitative discussion mentioned above, the numerical experiment of thermal convection in a wet air case is performed. The results show a good agreement with those obtained by the qualitative discussion.