Wthrman13 wrote:Shuriken wrote:I welcome a theory which can rationally explain what else could result in, say, convection in nearly all parts of Ernesto puffing up simultaneously while in the southwestern Caribbean (I remember this quite distinctly) at one point, only to then stall after several more sat-frames. It was a very weird phenomena, but not necessarily one you'd pay attention to if you weren't actively looking for it. Dry air, shear and water temps varied throughout the system, and could not reasonably be the cause of such system-wide simultaneous behavior on a per sub-hour basis. (I've previously discounted diurnals in this particular Ernesto example, because it occurred at the wrong time of day).
Here's another example of the same phenomena with TD9 today: note re-energized convection sprouting simultaneously in all parts of the storm.
I wrote: "(There have been scattered studies of high altitude import, but not enough for a general knowledge to percolate throughout the community of tropical devotees.) "On a more general note, there are numerous reasons why these convective bursts in developing TCs might be inhibited, and surface conditions are only one factor. Your posts make it sound like the tropical meteorology community only pays attention to surface conditions. They don't. There are numerous studies on the effects of gravity waves on convection/etc, much more than "scattered".
...given that I almost never see it discussed within these forums, I'll stand by that statement.
I wonder how much of the change between those two frames is due to the changing sun angle making the overshooting tops of the convection stand out more clearly. In any case, I'm not disputing that there could be system-wide changes in convective activity that we don't completely understand, I'm just not convinced of your explanation.
MODS: sorry for getting too off topic in my posts in this thread; I just find it easier to address topics related to general meteorological questions when they come up and not necessarily make a new thread to address them, but maybe I should do that in the future...
Although there was some increase overall in convection between those two it really is not a substantial amount and thus (at least in this case ) would have a extremely hard time working the math out to show it was the case. I do agree some of the enhancement is likely do to the sun angle. Being that my degree is atmospheric physics I have dealt with many of the off topic meteorological theories. all have merit but there is no single theory that can explain the sudden system wide explosion of convection seen in many TC's. Every physical parameter ( either we are aware of them or not) must be in place for this to happen.
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anyway.. convection continues to expand but appears still limited to southern half of the circ.
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