Journal
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
Volume 48, Issue 15, Pages -Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021GL093817
Keywords
entrainment rate; detrainment rate; new approach; aircraft observation; cumulus
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2017YFA0604001]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41822504, 41775131, 42027804, 42075073, 41975181]
- U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Biological and Environmental Research, Atmospheric Systems Research (ASR) Program
- U.S. Department of Energy [DE-SC00112704]
- ASR Program
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A new approach has been developed to estimate entrainment and detrainment rates in cumulus clouds based on aircraft observations, showing a decrease in rates with increasing height and correlations with environmental relative humidity. This method can be applied to obtain data sets related to cloud thermodynamic variables from other cloud observations.
A new approach is developed for estimating entrainment and detrainment rates in cumulus clouds based on aircraft observations. Equations relating entrainment and detrainment rates to gross entrainment and detrainment are derived. This approach is applied to the Holistic Interactions of Shallow Clouds, Aerosols, and Land-Ecosystems field campaign, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program. The results show that both entrainment and detrainment rates decrease with increasing height. Sensitivity tests with different detrained air assumptions yield similar results. The entrainment and detrainment rates can reproduce the cloud thermodynamic variables. Partial correlation analysis indicates that entrainment rate is positively correlated with environmental relative humidity (RH), and detrainment rate is negatively correlated with environmental RH and positively correlated with entrainment rate. This new approach can be applied to other cloud observations to obtain a data set of entrainment and detrainment rates in cumulus clouds.
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