The influence of horizontally non-uniform heating upon the development of strong convective mesoscale disturbances

It is shown by observational data and synoptic analysis that the development of strong convective echo is influenced by the horizontally non-uniform heating, such as the one caused by lake-land distribution. In this paper, a simple linear cell-convection model is established using an appropriate heating field, and the instability of heating convection is theoretically studied. It is found that the heating convection development will be unstable if the heating-caused temperature gradientdT ₀/dy is greater than the critical value (dT ₀/dy) _c which is approximately 0.64°C/10 km, and that the development of convective band has a preferred width of 12.5 km. It will take 25 min for the initial disturbance to increase intensity by 10 times. All these results are in rather good agreement with the squall line process in the lake-land region of Jiangsu Province on June 8, 1979.