Abstract This study investigates the role of land‐atmosphere coupling in favorable conditions for locally triggered convection in central Europe. The region is in so‐called transitional zones located between wet and dry climates, which favor land‐atmosphere coupling in summer. To quantify the strength of such land‐atmosphere coupling and its impact on local convection events, the Heated Condensation Framework is applied to analyze hourly vertical profiles of temperature and moisture. The analyzed profiles are based on simulations over the 2000–2011 period at convection permitting scale with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Depending on the characteristics of these profiles, regions either require more heat or more moisture to initiate convection during the course of the day. Temporal and regional aspects of these requirements are identified and quantified. The analysis reveals distinct patterns and regional variations in the frequency of favorable conditions for convection initiation and anomalies across different years, with areas in the northernmost parts of the study domain experiencing the highest frequency of convection‐preconditioning. Negative temperature anomalies of more than 2 K occurred in positive convection initiation preconditioning anomalies in the summer months of 2007, while positive temperature anomalies appeared in 2003, and in June and July 2006 during negative convection initiation preconditioning anomalies. The study emphasizes the importance of accessibility to the diurnal variability of vertically high‐resolution humidity and temperature profiles from convection permitting simulations for the investigation of the relationships between land‐atmosphere coupling and initiation of convection.
Warrach‐Sagi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.