Effects of vertical wind shear on convective development during a landfall of severe tropical storm Bilis (2006)

Effects of vertical wind shear on convective development during the landfall of tropical storm Bilis (2006) are investigated with a pair of sensitivity experiments using a two-dimensional cloud-resolving model. The validated simulation data from Wang et al. Wang, D., Li, X., Tao, W.-K., Liu, Y., Zhou, H., 2009: Torrential rainfall processes associated with a landfall of severe tropical storm Bilis (2006): A two-dimensional cloud-resolving modeling study. Atmos. Res., 91, 94–104.] are used as the control experiment. The difference between the control and sensitivity experiments is that vertically varying zonal winds in the control experiment are replaced by their mass-weighted means in the sensitivity experiment. The imposed vertical velocity with ascending motion in the upper troposphere and descending motion in the lower troposphere is responsible for dominant stratiform rainfall on 15 July. The vertical wind shear does not have important impacts on development of stratiform rainfall. One day later, imposed upward motion extends to the lower troposphere. The inclusion of negative vertical wind shear produces well-organized convection and strong convective rainfall because it causes kinetic energy transfer from large-scale forcing to perturbation circulations.