The Role of Surface Drag in Tornadogenesis within an Idealized Supercell Simulation

Abstract

Abstract To investigate the effect of surface drag on tornadogenesis, a pair of idealized simulations is conducted with 50-m horizontal grid spacing. In the first experiment (full-wind drag case), surface drag is applied to the full wind; in the second experiment (environmental drag case), drag is applied only to the background environmental wind, with storm-induced perturbations unaffected. The simulations are initialized using a thermal bubble within a horizontally homogeneous background environment that has reached a balance between the pressure gradient, Coriolis, and frictional forces. The environmental sounding is derived from a prior simulation of the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak but modified to account for near-ground frictional effects. In the full-wind drag experiment, a tornado develops around 25 min into the simulation and persists for more than 10 min; in the environmental-only drag experiment, no tornado occurs. Three distinct mechanisms are identified by which surface drag influences tornadogenesis. The first mechanism is the creation by drag of near-ground vertical wind shear (and associated horizontal vorticity) in the background environment. The second mechanism is generation of near-ground crosswise horizontal vorticity by drag on the storm scale as air accelerates into the low-level mesocyclone; this vorticity is subsequently exchanged into the streamwise direction and eventually tilted into the vertical. The third mechanism is frictional enhancement of horizontal convergence, which strengthens the low-level updraft and stretching of vertical vorticity. The second and third mechanisms are found to work together to produce a tornado, while baroclinic vorticity plays a negligible role.