Simulating realistic high-resolution precipitation in the tropics
Changes in rainfall characteristics over the Maritime Continent affect a rapidly increasing population of 275 million people through effects on agriculture, forest fires, floods and vector-borne diseases. However, current atmospheric models fail to represent most features of precipitation in the region, such as its distinctive strong diurnal cycle. Therefore, our knowledge of the physical processes initiating and propagating convective systems that generate precipitation in the Maritime Continent is very limited. In addition, the Maritime Continent is at a centre of interactions across scales, hence global model errors in this region propagate through the entire earth system and affect model estimates in remote regions too. This project is aimed at exploring our ability to simulate realistic precipitation by incorporating explicit convection and fine-scale ocean-atmosphere interactions in regional models. We will quantify the interplay between sea breeze circulation, ocean-atmosphere processes and convective systems to produce precipitation in the Maritime Continent and how it could change in the future. As such, this project will also advance our understanding of sea breeze and convective processes that are of major importance to a breadth of locations globally.