Convective Dynamics

In addressing meteorological processes, including convection, it is convenient to separate these processes into their kinematic, dynamic, and microphysical components. Dynamic processes deal with the forces that initiate and sustain or alter motion, while kinematic processes describe the motion field. Microphysical processes obviously address the distribution of water substance. When observing deep convection, the strength of the returned signal that a radar detects is related to the microphysical field. In addition, a Doppler radar senses the radial component of the ensemble of scatters, a kinematic quantity. Radar-derived divergence and vorticity fields are kinematic quantities. Dynamic processes can be inferred from observations and, most importantly, radar has been used to identify structures and morphology, whose dynamics have been addressed through theoretical and simulation studies. The constructive interaction between observations, models, and theory has been responsible for advances in our understanding of convective dynamics.