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arXiv · 2512.06668

How do cold pools influence the size of tropical cyclone embryos?

Hao Fu
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Abstract

The size of tropical cyclone (TC) embryos is an essential predictor of TC genesis. Recent studies have identified cold pools and planetary rotation as factors that increase and decrease TC embryo size. While the planetary rotation effect has been depicted using a quasi-geostrophic (QG) model, the cold pool effect still lacks a theoretical model. This paper presents a cloud chain model to derive the length scale regarding the influence of cold pools on the TC embryo vortex. Within the model, the amount of rain evaporation during a single convective event determines the wind speed and humidity at the cold pool edge, influencing the amount of sub-cloud moisture convergence for the next-generation convection and, therefore, the intensity of the next-generation cold pool. A perturbation analysis shows that cold pools exhibit a nonlocal dependence on air-column humidity, with the influence range determined by the cold pool size and a convective memory weight. The memory weight relies on the sum of the contributions of mechanical lifting and thermodynamic forcing to convective initiation. A crucial parameter is the ratio of rain evaporation to surface evaporation in a cold pool. By coupling the cloud chain model with the QG equation, an analytical expression for the TC embryo size is obtained. The theory captures the trend but overestimates the TC embryo size in cloud-permitting simulations. The deviation might be due to the oversimplification in estimating the fractional contribution of cold pools to convective initiation.

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Hao Fu. 2025-12-07. How do cold pools influence the size of tropical cyclone embryos?. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06668

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