A Phase-Plane Representation of the Convective Life Cycle: Characterizing Diabatic and Adiabatic Drivers during the Indian Summer Monsoon

Tropical deep convection evolves as a cyclic process, but most observational and modeling studies diagnose convection through regional or domain-based contrasts, obscuring how key physical processes vary across different stages of the convective life cycle. The convective life cycle in the tropics is frequently conceptualized through recharge discharge processes. While valuable, this framework can be extended with more granular, phase specific diagnostics to better understand the distinct physical processes governing each stage of convection. Here, we build on existing phase-plane approaches to represent convection as a cyclic process, using column-integrated moist static energy (MSE) and its temporal tendency as the primary state variables. The phase plane is constructed with column integrated MSE along the horizontal axis and its temporal derivative along the vertical axis. While adhering to the established recharge–discharge paradigm, we extend this terminology by defining four distinct, cycle-consistent stages on the phase plane: Build-up, Cresting, Decay, and Recovery. Applying this framework to the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) core region, we map quasi-geostrophic (QG) omega-scaled precipitation components onto the MSE phase plane  to investigate the relative contributions of diabatic heating  and adiabatic forcing across the convective life cycle. These stage dependent signatures demonstrate the utility of the MSE phase plane for attributing and relative importance of dynamical and diabatic processes across the convective life cycle. Final results and extended analyses will be presented and discussed at the conference.