Moist heatwaves intensified by entrainment of dry air that limits deep convection

Moist heatwaves in the tropics and subtropics pose substantial risks to society, yet the dynamics governing their intensity are not fully understood. The onset of deep convection arising from hot, moist near-surface air has been thought to limit the magnitude of moist heat waves. Here, we use reanalysis data, and output from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 and model entrainment perturbation experiments, to show that entrainment of unsaturated air in the lower-free troposphere (roughly 1--3 km above the surface) limits deep convection, thereby allowing much higher near-surface moist heat. Regions with large-scale subsidence and a dry lower-free troposphere, such as coastal areas adjacent to hot and arid land, are thus particularly susceptible to moist heat waves. Even in convective regions such as the northern Indian Plain, southeast Asia, and interior South America, the lower-free tropospheric dryness strongly affects the maximum surface wet-bulb temperature. As the cl..., , , # Data associated with the manuscript \"Moist heatwaves intensified by entrainment of dry air that limits deep convection\"

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn92v](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn92v)

Archived here are the Community Atmospheric Model version 5 (CAM5) entrainment experiment data and the post-processed data underlying all the figures, in the manuscript \"Moist heatwaves intensified by entrainment of dry air that limits deep convection\". 

Please cite this dataset (and the manuscript) if you are using the data for creating other products. Data were processed by Suqin Duan ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])), and the CAM5 entrainment experiments were conducted by Fiaz Ahmed ([[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail])). Questions and comments can be addressed to both [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]) and [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]).

## Description of the data and file structure

#### CAM5 entrainment experiment data

The following two files contain...