The interaction between cold fronts and convection in the mid-latitudes

Abstract

<p>Cold fronts provide an environment favourable for convective initiation in the mid-latitudes. Some studies also show the presence of a cold front can increase the chance of certain convective hazards, such as hail and heavy rain. Convection initiates in three locations in respect to cold fronts: <em>ahead</em> of the cold front in the warm sector of the cyclone, directly <em>at</em> the cold frontal boundary and also <em>behind</em> the cold front. Previous literature has typically focused on each initiation location independently, thus a comprehensive study investigating the link between cold fronts and convection is currently lacking from literature. This study seeks to better understand the climatology, scale interactions and forcing mechanisms of convection at each initiation location relative to the front (i.e., behind, at, ahead).</p><p>Automatic front detection methods are applied to reanalysis data and a convective cell-tracking dataset from the German Weather Service is used to build a climatology of cold fronts and convection between April–September. Convective cells are found to initiate most commonly 200–300km ahead of the cold front during late afternoon. Cells behind the front primarily initiate in north-western Germany and exhibit a strong diurnal cycle. On the contrary, cells at and ahead of the front initiate most frequently in southern Germany and exhibit a less prominent diurnal cycle, especially for cells at the frontal boundary. Lightning probability decreases with closing proximity to the cold front and the average number of cell initiations per day is significantly higher on days with cold fronts opposed to days without. The next stages of research will investigate the relative importance of various forcing mechanisms on the development of convective cells at different cell-front positions.</p>