Articles | Volume 20, issue 10
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-6129-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-6129-2020
Research article
 | 
26 May 2020
Research article |  | 26 May 2020

The vertical structure and spatial variability of lower-tropospheric water vapor and clouds in the trades

Ann Kristin Naumann and Christoph Kiemle

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Cited articles

Bauer, P., Thorpe, A., and Brunet, G.: The quiet revolution of numerical weather prediction, Nature, 525, 7567, 2015. a
Bellon, G. and Stevens, B.: Time scales of the trade wind boundary layer adjustment, J. Atmos. Sci., 70, 1071–1083, 2013. a
Bony, S., Stevens, B., Ament, F., Crewell, S., Delanoe, J., Farrell, D., Flamant, C., Gross, S., Hirsch, L., Mayer, B., Nuijens, L., Ruppert Jr., J. H., Sandu, I., Siebesma, P., Speich, S., Szczap, F., Vogel, R., Wendisch, M., and Wirth, M.: EUREC4A: a field campaign to elucidate the couplings between clouds, convection and circulation, Surv. Geophys., 38, 1529–1568, 2017. a, b
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Bretherton, C. S., Blossey, P. N., and Khairoutdinov, M.: An energy-balance analysis of deep convective self-aggregation above uniform SST, J. Atmos. Sci., 62, 4273–4292, 2005. a, b, c
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Short summary
The interaction of water vapor and cloudiness poses challenges for weather and climate models. In this study we compare airborne lidar measurements from two field campaigns in the tropical Atlantic with high-resolution simulations. We find that at kilometer-scale grid spacing, the simulations show good skill in reproducing the water vapor distribution in the trades but struggle to capture the transition from cloud-free to low cloud fraction with increasing moisture.
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