Latent Heating and Cooling Rates in Developing and Nondeveloping Tropical Disturbances during TCS-08: TRMM PR versus ELDORA Retrievals*

Abstract

Abstract Unique sets of Electra Doppler Radar (ELDORA) observations in both developing and nondeveloping tropical disturbances in the western North Pacific are used to retrieve latent heating and cooling rates. During the reintensification of Sinlaku, maximum heating rates of about 80 K h−1 are diagnosed in the upper troposphere in the region of a strong updraft and maximum cooling rates of about −45 K h−1 are diagnosed in the lower troposphere in the region of a strong convective-scale downdraft. The southern convective burst in the pre-Nuri mission had a lower-tropospheric maximum in latent heating that was a more favorable condition for tropical cyclone formation than was the upper-tropospheric maximum in heating and the lower-tropospheric maximum in cooling in the northern convective burst. Two nondeveloping tropical disturbances had deeper layers of more uniform heating and of cooling rates, and some evidence of more shallow cloud tops, that distinguished them from the developing cases. Although the Shige et al. Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) precipitation radar (PR) algorithm was only intended to be applied over large areas on longer time scales, the PR-derived latent heating profiles were compared with the ELDORA-derived profiles to reveal important mesoscale effects. Because all six cases indicated near-zero cooling rates, a new TRMM PR algorithm should be developed that would include the effects of saturated convective-scale downdrafts in tropical mesoscale convective systems (MCSs). Production of a legacy TRMM PR dataset with this improvement would be useful for diagnosing tropical cyclone formation dating back to 1998, and for specifying initial and validation conditions for numerical models in the tropics.