Cold pool

In atmospheric science, a cold pool (CP) is a cold pocket of dense air that forms when rain evaporates during intense precipitation e.g. underneath a thunderstorm cloud or a precipitating shallow cloud. Typically, cold pools spread at 10 m/s and last 2–3 hours. Cold pools are ubiquitous both over land and ocean.

The characteristics and impact of cold pools vary depending on the properties of the parent convection, namely its rain rates, and the large-scale environment in which they originate. Cold pools can have a strong impact on cloud cover and organization, by triggering new convection at the gust front and suppressing clouds in its interior.

Cold pools can be detected and studied using observations, high resolution numerical simulations, and simple conceptual models.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.