Tornado formation

The mesocyclone

Tornadoes may occur wherever conditions favour the development of strong thunderstorms. Essential conditions for such storms are the presence of cool, dry air at middle levels in the troposphere, overlying a layer of moist, conditionally unstable air near the surface of the Earth. Conditional instability occurs when a saturated air parcel (air at 100 percent relative humidity) continues to rise once set in motion, but an unsaturated air parcel resists being displaced vertically. The unsaturated air, if moved upward, will be cooler than the surrounding air and it will sink. On the other hand, when conditionally unstable air rises it becomes warmer owing to the condensation of water vapour. As the water condenses, heat is released, further warming the air and fueling its rise. This convective action (that is, the circulation of air as a result of heat transfer) produces the huge clouds commonly associated with thunderstorms and tornadoes. Convection can be initiated when the Sun heats a localized area of the ground, destabilizing the near-surface air.

Thunderstorms can also form along the boundary, or front, between air masses of different temperatures. In this case, the denser cool air displaces the warmer and forces it to rise. The greater the contrast in temperature and moisture across the frontal boundary, the greater the instability of the atmosphere and the greater the likelihood of a strong thunderstorm.

Most tornadoes are formed when a strong updraft such as those described above acts to concentrate atmospheric rotation, or spin, into a swirling column of air. Spin is a natural occurrence in air because horizontal winds almost always experience both an increase in speed and a veering in direction with increasing height above the surface. The increase of wind speed with height (called vertical speed shear) produces “crosswise spin,” that is, rotation about a horizontal axis crosswise to the direction of wind flow. When air containing crosswise spin flows into an updraft, the spin is drawn upward, producing rotation about a vertical axis. The veering of wind direction with height (vertical direction shear) is another source of horizontal spin, this time oriented in the same direction as the wind flow and known as “streamwise spin.” When air containing streamwise spin is drawn into an updraft, it too is tilted upward and rotates about a vertical axis. Although crosswise spin and streamwise spin are oriented at right angles to each other, both rotations exist in the horizontal plane, and both types have been revealed by Doppler radar observations to contribute to the evolution of a rotating updraft. Radar observations also have shown that updraft rotation makes its appearance in a thunderstorm at altitudes of 4 to 8 km (2.5 to 5 miles). At first, the tilting of crosswise spin into the vertical appears to be the principal mechanism of rotation; subsequently, as updraft rotation intensifies, the tilting of streamwise spin becomes more important. The resulting swirling column of rising air, perhaps 10 to 20 km (6 to 12 miles) in diameter and only weakly rotating, is called a mesocyclone.

The dynamic pipe

As spin-up of the mesocyclone continues, its rotating action begins to reorganize airflow in the updraft. The local pressure field and the strongly curved wind field move toward a dynamic equilibrium called cyclostrophic balance. In this state, the pressure-gradient force, which acts to move air inward in response to the lower pressure in the centre of the rotating column, is equaled by the outward-directed centrifugal force. When cyclostrophic balance is achieved, air readily flows in a circular path around the mesocyclone’s axis, while flow toward or away from its centre is strongly suppressed. This state, in which airflow is constrained by its own rotation, is known as the dynamic pipe effect.

The middle level of the storm is usually the first area where cyclostrophic balance is achieved, and it is this section of the mesocyclone that begins to act as a dynamic pipe. Almost all the air flowing along the mesocyclone’s axis is drawn in through the bottom of the pipe. This inflow further intensifies rotation at the pipe’s lower end, causing it to extend rapidly downward as the more quickly rotating region comes into cyclostrophic balance.

Strong convergence of inflowing air at the lower end of the pipe causes air parcels to be accelerated upward and vertically “stretched.” Vertical stretching normally causes the mesocyclone to contract to a diameter of about 2 to 6 km (1 to 4 miles). As this happens, the mesocyclone rotates more quickly, which in turn strengthens the convergence of inflowing winds at its base. In this manner the mesocyclone grows in strength in a positive-feedback, or self-amplifying, process.

Development of the dynamic pipe effect can produce a mesocyclone that extends the full depth of the thunderstorm, from about 1 km (0.6 mile) above the ground to near the storm’s top at about 15 km (9 miles). Frequently, the maturation of the mesocyclone is heralded at the bottom of the cloud by a lowering of a portion of the thunderstorm’s base in the area of the updraft. This approximately cylindrical extension is known as a wall cloud. Surface winds with speeds as high as 33 metres per second, or 120 km per hour (110 feet per second, or 75 miles per hour) can be present beneath this swirling cloud, often producing damage even when no tornado forms.