Tropical Convective Organisation and Its Relation to the Large-Scale Atmospheric Environment

The clustering aspect of tropical thunderstorms is an important part of the tropical hydrological and climate system, but it is not clear how its development and presence interacts with the surrounding atmosphere on scales of many kilometers. Thus we examine the relationship between the large-scale atmosphere and clustered thunderstorms by using explainable artificial intelligence methods. We find that for strong clustering, the horizontal winds are important and at the Northwestern Australian coastline they are likely connected to monsoon regimes. Atmospheric moisture is not important and clustered thunderstorms in dry conditions are likely triggered by sea breezes at coasts.