Evaluation of Multiple Planetary Boundary Layer Parameterization Schemes in Southeast U.S. Cold Season Severe Thunderstorm Environments

Abstract

Abstract Southeast U.S. cold season severe weather events can be difficult to predict because of the marginality of the supporting thermodynamic instability in this regime. The sensitivity of this environment to prognoses of instability encourages additional research on ways in which mesoscale models represent turbulent processes within the lower atmosphere that directly influence thermodynamic profiles and forecasts of instability. This work summarizes characteristics of the southeast U.S. cold season severe weather environment and planetary boundary layer (PBL) parameterization schemes used in mesoscale modeling and proceeds with a focused investigation of the performance of nine different representations of the PBL in this environment by comparing simulated thermodynamic and kinematic profiles to observationally influenced ones. It is demonstrated that simultaneous representation of both nonlocal and local mixing in the Asymmetric Convective Model, version 2 (ACM2), scheme has the lowest overall errors for the southeast U.S. cold season tornado regime. For storm-relative helicity, strictly nonlocal schemes provide the largest overall differences from observationally influenced datasets (underforecast). Meanwhile, strictly local schemes yield the most extreme differences from these observationally influenced datasets (underforecast) in a mean sense for the low-level lapse rate and depth of the PBL, on average. A hybrid local–nonlocal scheme is found to mitigate these mean difference extremes. These findings are traced to a tendency for local schemes to incompletely mix the PBL while nonlocal schemes overmix the PBL, whereas the hybrid schemes represent more intermediate mixing in a regime where vertical shear enhances mixing and limited instability suppresses mixing.