Land-atmosphere coupling induced local moist convection initiation in central Europe

In Europe, extreme weather events are expected to increase noticeably in frequency, duration, and intensity with the continued warming of the planet's climate. Land-atmosphere feedbacks have been shown to play an important role in the exacerbation of events such as heat waves and droughts. Due to the important role of convective events in local weather an improved understanding of the role that land-atmosphere feedback plays in the development of convection initiation is required.

The heated condensation framework (HCF) enables the quantification of land-atmosphere coupling strength and local convection events in dependence of the temperature and moisture profiles from the ground to the planetary boundary layer height. The HCF is applied to the hourly data from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model application of the University of Hohenheim (UHOH) within the decadal km-scale regional climate simulations within CORDEX-FPS convection.

The analysis reveals the Po-Valley area as a hotspot of land-atmosphere coupling-induced local convection initiation in central Europe. Further strong wet and dry soil anomalies impact the number of local convection initiation events throughout the studied domain.