Soil Moisture Influence on the Incidence of Summer Mesoscale Convective Systems in the US Great Plains

Mesoscale convective systems (MCS) are known to develop under ideal conditions of temperature and humidity profiles and large-scale dynamic forcing. Recent work, however, has shown that summer MCS events can occur under weak synoptic forcing or even unfavorable large-scale environments. When baroclinic forcing is weak, convection may be triggered by anomalous conditions at the land surface. This work evaluates land surface conditions for summer MCS events forming in the U.S. Great Plains using an MCS database covering the contiguous United States east of the Rocky Mountains, in boreal summers 2004-16. After isolatingMCS cases where synoptic-scale influences are not the main driver of development (i.e., only non-squall-line storms), antecedent soil moisture conditions are evaluated over two domain sizes (1.25 degrees and 5 degrees squares) centered on the mean position of the storm initiation. A negative correlation between soil moisture and MCS initiation is identified for the smaller domain, indicating that MCS events tend to be initiated over patches of anomalously dry soils of similar to 100-km scale, but not significantly so. For the larger domain, soil moisture heterogeneity, with anomalously dry soils (anomalously wet soils) located southwest (northeast) of the initiation point, is associated with MCS initiation. This finding is similar to previous results in the Sahel and Europe that suggest that induced meso-beta circulations from surface heterogeneity can drive convection initiation.