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Ghate, Virendra P. & Miller, Mark A. & Zhu, Ping (2015). Differences between Nonprecipitating Tropical and Trade Wind Marine Shallow Cumuli. Monthly Weather Review, 144(2), 681-701. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3G73GPR

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Differences between Nonprecipitating Tropical and Trade Wind Marine Shallow Cumuli (2015)
Virendra P. Ghate, Mark A. Miller, Ping Zhu
Monthly Weather Review 144(2): 681-701.
Link to published version
VersionVersion of Record (VoR)
AbstractMarine nonprecipitating cumulus topped boundary layers (CTBL) observed in a tropical and in a trade-wind region are contrasted based on their cloud macro-physical, dynamical, and radiative structures. Data from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) observational site previously operating at Manus Island and data collected during the deployment of ARM Mobile Facility at the island of Graciosa were used in this study. The tropical marine CTBL were deeper, had higher surface fluxes and boundary layer radiative cooling, but lower wind speeds compared to their trade-wind counterparts. The radiative velocity scale was 50-70% of the surface convective velocity scale at both locations, highlighting the prominent role played by radiation in maintaining turbulence in marine CTBLs. Despite greater thicknesses, the chord lengths of tropical cumuli were on average lower than that of trade wind cumuli, and due to lower cloud cover, the hourly averaged (cloudy and clear) liquid water paths of tropical cumuli were lower than the trade-wind cumuli. At both locations ~70% of the cloudy profiles were updrafts, while the averaged amount of updrafts near cloud base stronger than 1 m s-1 was ~22% in tropical cumuli and ~12% in the trade-wind cumuli. The mean in-cloud radar reflectivity within updrafts and mean updraft velocity was higher in tropical cumuli than the trade-wind cumuli. Despite stronger vertical velocities and more amount of strong updrafts, due to lower cloud fraction, the updraft mass-flux was lower in tropical cumuli compared to the trade-wind cumuli. The observations suggest the tropical and trade-wind marine cumulus clouds to differ significantly in their macro-physical and dynamical structures.
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3G73GPR
SubjectsCumulus, Marine boundary layer, Boundary layer, Clouds, Clouds and radiation, Clouds--Dynamics
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