The Energy Budget Over the Florida Peninsula When a Convective Regime Dominates

Abstract

In order to assess the role played by convective processes in the vertical transfer of energy, the mean structure and energy budget over the Florida Peninsula have been studied, when the convective scale is the dominant scale of motion present. The study utilized 0000 and 1200 GMT radiosonde data for the period 1957-65 and the convectively dominated period was identified as June, July and August. Energy budget computations show that the Florida Peninsula provides a considerable amount of latent and sensible energy across the air-surface interface. Convective processes make a significant contribution to the vertical transport of energy. The sea-breeze circulation is found to play an important role in the physical processes taking place. When the entire tropospheric volume is considered, it is found that there is a net expert of energy.