Subgrid-scale horizontal and vertical variation of cloud water in stratocumulus clouds: a case study based on LES and comparisons with in situ observations

Covert, Justin A.; Mechem, David B.; Zhang, Zhibo

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1159-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1159-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1159-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 2

Research article

|

24 Jan 2022

Research article |

| 24 Jan 2022

Subgrid-scale horizontal and vertical variation of cloud water in stratocumulus clouds: a case study based on LES and comparisons with in situ observations

Justin A. Covert, David B. Mechem, and Zhibo Zhang

Data sets

ACE-ENA field campaign data Atmospheric Radiation Measurement https://adc.arm.gov/discovery/#/results/s::ENA

Model code and software

ENA Variability Data J. Covert, D. Mechem, and Z. Zhang https://github.com/dmechem/ENA_variability_LES_bulk_paper

Short summary

Stratocumulus play an important role in Earth's radiative balance. The simulation of these cloud systems in climate models is difficult due to the scale at which cloud microphysical processes occur compared with model grid sizes. In this study, we use large-eddy simulation to analyze subgrid-scale variability of cloud water and its implications on a cloud water to drizzle model enhancement factor E. We find current values of E may be too large and that E should be vertically dependent in models.