Articles | Volume 26, issue 17
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-26-12543-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-26-12543-2026
Research article
 | 
04 Sep 2026
Research article |  | 04 Sep 2026

A cellular automaton model of tropical oceanic rain clusters with criticality

Kevin K. W. Cheung, Chee-Kiat Teo, and Tieh-Yong Koh

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Cited articles

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Bak, P., Tang, C., and Wiesenfeld, K.: Self-organized criticality: An explanation of the 1/f noise, Phys. Rev. Lett., 59, 381, https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.59.381, 1987. 
Bao, J., Sherwood, S., Colin, M., and Dixit, V.: The Robust Relationship Between Extreme Precipitation and Convective Organization in Idealized Numerical Modeling Simulations, J. Adv. Model. Earth Sy., 9, 2291–2303, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017MS001125, 2017. 
Bengtsson, L. and Han, J.: Updates to NOAA's Unified Forecast System's cumulus convection parameterization scheme between GFSv16 and GFSv17, Weather Forecast., 39, https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-23-0232.1, 2024. 
Bengtsson, L., Körnich, H., Källén, E., and Svensson, G.: Large-scale dynamical response to subgrid-scale organization provided by cellular automata, J. Atmos. Sci., 68, 3132–3144, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAS-D-10-05028.1, 2011. 
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This study presents a cellular automaton (CA) model of tropical oceanic rain clusters based on atmospheric stability and gravity-wave interactions. The model reproduces power-law distributions for cluster area and rain rate, exhibiting criticality similar to 2D percolation. The scaling exponent for cluster area is robust to model parameters and matches simulations over the Indian Ocean and Atlantic, although it differs from some observational estimates, suggesting further model tuning is needed.
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