Impact of global variable resolution meshes on cloud processes

The Model Prediction Across Scales (MPAS) has been designed for applications ranging from limited-area cloud-scale experiments to global variable-resolution weather forecasts and climate predictions. Because the horizontal discretization of MPAS uses unstructured centroidal Voronoi meshes, allowing the inclusion of local mesh refinement within a much coarser domain, MPAS provides an ideal tool to investigate the impact of variable mesh resolution on simulated convective and cloud microphysics processes. MPAS is currently being tested using physics parameterizations taken from the Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model. These parameterizations are best suited for mesoscale applications. We present early results of global short-term forecasts using variable mesh resolution. We focus our analysis on the behavior of convection and cloud microphysics as the mesh transitions from parameterized to resolved convective scales.