The Coastal Convective Interactions Experiment (CCIE): Understanding the role of sea breezes for hailstorm hotspots in Eastern Australia

An automated thunderstorm identification and tracking technique applied to 18 years of radar data identifies not only the hailstorm hotpots well known to experienced local forecasters but an apparent link between localized maxima and the presence of sea breeze activity. These climatological findings provided the motivation and guidance for a two-season field campaign to investigate the role of the sea breeze in thunderstorm development.

Details of the experiment strategy and equipment specifications are presented alongside preliminary results. Significant complexities were observed within sea-breeze and thunderstorms circulations, limiting the application of standard concepts for idealized gravity current interactions. Furthermore, a multi-instrument case study of a sea-breeze-thunderstorm cold pool interaction identifies the comparatively low sea-breeze buoyancy as the primary contributor toward inhibiting new convective initiation, despite the vorticity balance argument favoring deeper updrafts.