The role of elevated terrain and the Gulf of Mexico in the production of severe local storm environments over North America

TL;DR

This study investigates how elevated terrain and the Gulf of Mexico influence severe local storm environments over North America, revealing that terrain has a stronger impact than the Gulf in shaping these environments.

Contribution

The paper provides a novel analysis using climate model experiments to quantify the distinct roles of terrain and the Gulf of Mexico in SLS environment formation.

Findings

Elevated terrain significantly enhances SLS environments over North America.

Removing terrain reduces SLS environments and synoptic drivers, especially inland.

Replacing the Gulf with land shifts and reduces SLS environments in the eastern U.S.

Abstract

The prevailing conceptual model for the production of severe local storm (SLS) environments over North America asserts that upstream elevated terrain and the Gulf of Mexico are both essential to their formation. This work tests this hypothesis using two prescribed-ocean climate model experiments with North American topography removed or the Gulf of Mexico converted to land and analyzes how SLS environments and associated synoptic-scale drivers (southerly Great Plains low-level jets, drylines, elevated mixed layers, and extratropical cyclones) change relative to a control historical run. Overall, SLS environments depend strongly on upstream elevated terrain but weakly on the Gulf of Mexico. Removing elevated terrain substantially reduces SLS environments especially over the continental interior due to broad reductions in both thermodynamic and kinematic parameters, leaving a more zonally-uniform residual distribution that is maximized near the Gulf coast and decays toward the continental interior. This response is associated with a strong reduction in synoptic-scale drivers and a cooler and drier mean-state atmosphere. Replacing the Gulf of Mexico with land modestly reduces SLS environments thermodynamically over the Great Plains and increases them kinematically over the eastern U.S, shifting the primary local maximum eastward into Illinois; it also eliminates the secondary, smaller local maximum over southern Texas. This response is associated with modest changes in synoptic-scale drivers and a warmer and drier lower-tropospheric mean state. These experiments provide insight into the role of elevated terrain and the Gulf of Mexico in modifying the spatial distribution and seasonality of SLS environments.