Journal
JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MODELING EARTH SYSTEMS
Volume 13, Issue 10, Pages -Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1029/2021MS002619
Keywords
shallow cumulus; cloud organization; cloud and aerosol; Lagrangian large eddy simulation; mesoscale circulation; large scale subsidence
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Funding
- NOAA's Climate Program Office, Climate Variability and Predictability Program [GC19-303]
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The Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) conducted a Lagrangian large eddy simulation to study the transition of cloud organization in trade-wind regime, showing that mesoscale circulation plays a key role in strengthening cloud organization in moist regions.
The Atlantic Tradewind Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Interaction Campaign (ATOMIC) took place in January-February, 2020. It was designed to understand the relationship between shallow convection and the large-scale environment in the trade-wind regime. A Lagrangian large eddy simulation, following the trajectory of a boundary-layer airmass, can reproduce a transition of trade cumulus organization from sugar to flower clouds with cold pools, observed on February 2-3. The simulation is driven with reanalysis large-scale meteorology, and in-situ aerosol data from ATOMIC and its joint field study EUREC(4)A. During the transition, large-scale upward motion deepens the cloud layer. The total water path and optical depth increase, especially in the moist regions where flowers aggregate. This is due to mesoscale circulation that renders a net convergence of total water in the already moist and cloudy regions, strengthening the organization. An additional simulation shows that stronger large scale upward motion reinforces the mesoscale circulation and accelerates the organization process by strengthening the cloud-layer mesoscale buoyant turbulence kinetic energy production.
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