Relevance of Surface Energy Budget within Florida Sea-Breeze Front to Cross-Peninsula Rainwater Runoff Gradient

Abstract

Analysis of surface latent heat flux measurements taken within the sea-breeze front of the coast of Florida during active thunderstorm periods demonstrates an important effect of the timing of coastal storms on the seasonal surface water budget. Historical records document a systematic cross-peninsula water runoff gradient across Florida, with total runoff greater on the east coast (Atlantic side) than on the west coast (gulf side). This situation persists even though convective rainfall tends to be greater in the summertime on the gulf side. In this paper, the authors examine the effect of the time of day that summer thunderstorms occur at a given location on poststorm evaporation of rainfall and place these effects into the context of the annual runoff at the coasts and seasonal rainfall in order to assess their possible significance. A surface water exchange analysis, based on datasets obtained during the 1991 summertime Convection and Precipitation Electrification Experiment, finds that part of the runoff gradient can be explained by an indirect atmospheric mechanism. Results indicate that differences in the diurnal timing of thunderstorms between the two coasts and the associated differences in postthunderstorm evapotranspiration can account for a significant portion of the annual differential in runoff. During the summer months, gulf coast storms often occur earlier in the day than Atlantic coast storms because of the combined effects of the mesoscale sea-breeze convergence and synoptic-scale flow around the Bermuda high. Under these conditions, once the later-day east coast thunderstorms dissipate, there is no longer any net solar radiation source to drive evapotranspiration, so that rainwater not taken up by ground filtration tends to go into runoff. On the west coast, when thunderstorms occur earlier and dissipate in midafternoon, there is still enough net surface radiation to drive significant rates of evapotranspiration, which reduces the amount of water available for runoff. The difference in available rainfall that results from the increased evaporation after the earlier storms is found to be about 2 mm, which over the summer season amounts to some 50 mm of water not made available for runoff on the west coast. This is significant when compared to the annual cross-peninsula runoff gradient of 250 mm. It is also found that it takes 4.5 days of clear-sky latent heat fluxes to reevaporate average storm rainfall back into the atmosphere. In addition, areas that are not close to the center of storm outflows tend to be neutral in terms of daily surface water exchange, evaporating as much as they receive, while cloudy areas with no rain evaporate at rates close to 90% of the clear-sky rates on a daily basis. This paper addresses the details of these processes and quantifies the surface water exchange in south Florida as a function of the proximity to the summertime thunderstorm outflows.