A51E-3082:
Shallow cloud statistics over Tropical Western Pacific: CAM5 versus ARM Comparison
Friday, 19 December 2014
Arunchandra S. Chandra1, Chidong Zhang2, Stephen A Klein3, Hsi-Yen Ma3, Pavlos Kollias4 and Shaocheng Xie3, (1)University of Miami, Miami, FL, United States, (2)Univ Miami-RSMAS/MPO, Miami, FL, United States, (3)Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, United States, (4)McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Abstract:
The role of shallow convection in the tropical convective cloud life cycle has received increasing interest because of its sensitivity to simulate large-scale tropical disturbances such as MJO. Though previous studies have proposed several hypotheses to explain the role of shallow clouds in the convective life cycle, our understanding on the role of shallow clouds is still premature. There are more questions needs to be addressed related to the role of different cloud population, conditions favorable for shallow to deep convection transitions, and their characteristics at different stages of the convective cloud life. The present study aims to improve the understanding of the shallow clouds by documenting the role of different shallow cloud population for the Year of Tropical Convection period using Atmospheric Radiation Measurement observations at the Tropical Western Pacific Manus site. The performance of the CAM5 model to simulate shallow clouds are tested using observed cloud statistics.
