Impact of environmental instability on convective precipitation uncertainty associated with the nature of the rimed ice species in a bulk microphysics scheme

Despite a number of studies dedicated to the sensitivity of deep convection simulations to the properties of the rimed ice species in microphysics schemes, no consensus has been achieved on the nature of the impact. Considering the need for improved quantitative precipitation forecasts, it is crucial that the cloud modeling community better understands the reasons for these differing conclusions and knows the relevance of these sensitivities for the numerical weather prediction. This study examines the role of environmental conditions and storm type on the sensitivity of precipitation simulations to the nature of the rimed ice species (graupel or hail). Idealized 3D simulations of supercells/multicells and squall lines have been performed in varying thermodynamic environments. It has been shown that for simulation periods of sufficient length (.2 h), graupel-containing and hail-containing storms produce domain-averaged surface precipitation that is more similar than many earlier studies suggest. While graupel is lofted to higher altitudes and has a longer residence time aloft than hail, these simulations suggest that most of this graupel eventually reaches the surface and the surface precipitation rates of hail- and graupel-containing storms converge. However, environmental conditions play an important role in the magnitude of this sensitivity. Storms in large-CAPE environments (typical of storms in the U.S. Midwest) are more sensitive than their low-CAPE counterparts (typical of storms in Europe) to the nature of the rimed ice species in terms of domain-average surface precipitation. Supercells/multicells are more sensitive than squall lines to the nature of the rimed ice species in terms of spatial precipitation distribution and peak precipitation, disregarding of the amount of CAPE. © 2013 American Meteorological Society.