Smoke from fires linked to tornado occurrence/intensity

[Hoosier]

Well, this sounds interesting.  Would like to read the paper but I'm not paying for it.

 

Tornadoes in the Southeast and Central U.S. are episodically accompanied by smoke from biomass burning in Central America. Analysis of the 27 April 2011 historical tornado outbreak shows that adding smoke to an environment already conducive to severe thunderstorm development can increase the likelihood of significant tornado occurrence. Numerical experiments indicate that the presence of smoke during this event leads to optical thickening of shallow clouds while soot within the smoke enhances the capping inversion through radiation absorption. The smoke effects are consistent with measurements of clouds and radiation before and during the outbreak. These effects result in lower cloud bases and stronger low-level wind shear in the warm sector of the extratropical cyclone generating the outbreak; two indicators of higher probability of tornadogenesis and tornado intensity and longevity. These mechanisms may contribute to tornado modulation by aerosols, highlighting the need to consider aerosol feedbacks in numerical severe weather forecasting.

 

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150202141014.htm

 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062826/abstract;jsessionid=A8144E4F0C0B81CCFA8C705F67B57DD8.f02t03

 

 

[andyhb]

Sounds interesting (although there are other adjectives that also come to mind), but I would like to see more cases.

 

Also don't like the fact that I see a typo already in the introductory paragraph.

[nwburbschaser]

Hmm, maybe those big Colorado wildfires in the summer of 2012 were the reason why we had 111 tornadoes that June and not 110.   

 

In all seriousness, I would think that smoke in the atmosphere would have some effect one way or another so that idea is at least plausible.  I just don't like the idea of using 4/27/11 as an example because that is such an extreme event.  I'd like to see some borderline events that panned out and maybe they have something.